


The Conviction of Things Not Seen

by airecrazy, Mad_Lori



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Brief Non-monogamy, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hall Pass, Minor Poe Dameron/Finn, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Redemption, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, post-trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 52,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airecrazy/pseuds/airecrazy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Lori/pseuds/Mad_Lori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows he is a war criminal. He's done terrible things. But in the end, he turned his back on the Dark Side and helped to defeat his own Master. Now, a prisoner of the victorious Resistance, he sits in a cell and accepts his punishment. She really shouldn't talk to him. </p><p>She really shouldn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1

**Author's Note:**

> “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” -Hebrews 11:1, RSV

**Day 1**

 

She lurks in the hallway, debating whether to go in. She has no reason to go in. She’d probably be advised against it. She’s not even sure why she  _ wants _ to go in. Perhaps just to reassure herself that he is in there, tucked away, secure, and no longer a threat.

 

She knows he is no longer a threat, even were he not locked in an impenetrable polyglass box. He hasn’t been a threat since he turned away from her, his face roiling with anguish, and faced down his own master, placing himself between her and death. She does not fear him. 

 

She had been present at the meeting held to debate what should be done with him. She had sat in a corner, not saying anything, letting the generals and admirals fight it out.

 

_ He committed acts of genocide and murder. _

 

_ He wasn’t himself. He was seduced before he was strong enough to fight it. He’d been groomed since infancy, poisoned and brainwashed. _

 

_ He is responsible. It cannot be excused.  _

 

_ He saved our lives. He destroyed the First Order. We cannot ignore that, either. He turned his back on the Dark. _

 

_ He cannot be forgiven for what he’s done. He can never be trusted. _

 

_ He has placed himself at our mercy. Our mercy should be given to him. _

 

_ You’re suggesting we let him go? Free him, without consequence? _

 

_ I’m suggesting that forgiveness is revolutionary. _

 

The General, so quiet during this debate, had finally spoken when addressed.  _ He murdered his father. He is not my son. My son is dead. Do with him what you will. _ And then she had stood and left, stunned faces watching her go.

 

Rey had seen the pain in Luke’s eyes as his sister turned her back on what remained of her family. 

 

Finn finds her still leaning in the corridor. “What are you doing? You didn’t show up for lunch.” He hands her some bread and cheese, wrapped in a napkin. “Here. You shouldn’t skip meals.”

 

She smirks. “They teach you that in stormtrooper school?”

 

“Yeah, actually. They weren’t wrong about everything.” He leans against the wall at her side. “You just making sure he doesn’t sneak out?”

 

“He can’t. It’s a Modjovian polyglass containment cell, strengthened by the Force.”

 

“By Luke?”

 

“And me.”

 

“So...if he can’t sneak out, you’re...what? Holding up the wall?”

 

“I don’t know. I just...I know he’s in there. I know it’s really over.”

 

“Is it ever really over, though? They thought it was over when the Emperor was killed, too. Look how that turned out.”

 

“Maybe that’s what they mean by balance in the Force. No side can ever win for too long.”

 

Finn glances at the door to the cell. “At least the light won in him. For now.”

 

She meets Finn’s eyes. “Do you think he’s really changed?”

 

He is quiet for a moment. “Yeah. I do. Do you?”

 

“I don’t know. I want to think so. I want the general to have her son back. And...well...he’s a powerful Jedi. We need all the help we can get.”

 

“He won’t do much good sitting in a cell, though.”

 

“I think it’s temporary. Nobody knows what to do with him.”

 

“Well, at least you’re out here, making sure nobody bugs him.” Finn’s eyes twinkle.

 

She nudges him. “Shut up.”

 

**Day 2**

 

She walks by the cell, and doesn’t look at it.

 

She definitely doesn’t look at it the second time she walks by.

 

Or the third.

 

Maybe the fourth.

 

**Day 3**

 

She takes the long way around to the mess hall to avoid passing the detention corridor.

 

**Day 4**

 

She goes in.

 

She doesn’t know what she expected. A loud alarm, a shrieking voice proclaiming that she isn’t supposed to be there. Perhaps for Luke to appear in a puff of smoke and drag her off to train. But nothing happens.

 

There is a guard. Most of the room is taken up by a large cube made of impregnable polyglass. Inside it are the barest amenities. A cot and a bathroom.

 

And Kylo Ren.

 

No, not Kylo. Ben Solo. He’s asked to be called by the name he was born with.

 

He is sitting in lotus position in the center of the cell, perfectly still, eyes closed and hands held low, fingertips together. He is meditating.

 

She isn’t surprised to see that he is wearing the tunic and pants of a Jedi. She’d heard Luke and the Admiral fighting about it. The Admiral said that Solo shouldn’t be afforded the honor of a Jedi’s clothing. Luke said that if they wanted him to embrace the light, they should give him its trappings. And he’d earned those clothes, before his fall. So Luke had won, as he always did.

 

The guard acknowledges her. After a moment of her just staring, he speaks.

 

“That’s all he does,” he said.

 

“Sorry, what?”

 

“He eats and sleeps, and when he’s not doing those things, he does...this. Some Jedi thing, I guess.”

 

She nods. “He’s centering himself. He seeks the Force.”

 

“He’s going to have to look hard,” the guard says, a sharp edge to his voice, and Rey wonders who he lost to the First Order. A friend? A lover? A brother?

 

She watches Ben for a few minutes. He doesn’t move or open his eyes. She leaves, wondering what she had been expecting.

 

**Day 5**

 

She’s back. She’s stopped asking herself why she’s so...fixated. But is it really so strange to be so? This is a man she fought many times, both besting him and being bested by him. She’d watched him kill a man she’d come to care for, she’d fought off his attempts to intrude into her thoughts. She’d felt the deep conflict within him, the screaming of his innermost self to stop, stop it all, go back, ask for help. And when the moment had come, she’d seen him save her life, betray his own cause, and cast his lot with the rebels he’d spent years hunting. When she’d had the chance to let him die, she hadn’t taken it, and had brought him with her. Because that was how it was supposed to be.

 

That she couldn’t just wash her hands of it and observe from a distance was probably predictable.

 

He is still meditating. Today, she sets down her staff and bag and sits down on the floor outside his cell, mirroring his posture, a standard Jedi meditation posture. She can sense him, even though the polyglass and the Force shields surrounding it. She can feel the gears in his soul turning, out of sync, missing their notches, and how he seeks to bring them into alignment, let them turn as one.

 

She shuts her eyes, straightens her back, and falls into her own favorite meditation pose, hands loosely splayed on her knees, head lowered a bit. She finds her own center right away...but hers has never been far, as Ben’s likely was.

 

She reaches out through the Force. She seeks his truth, so she can know for certain who he is, and if he is one of them, or merely a man so broken that he can never belong to either dark or light.

 

His mind is a maze of barbed wire and mirrors. She cannot enter, she cannot touch it. He is a fortress, one he has built around himself and to which only he has the keys. After almost an hour, Rey gives up. She disengages and lifts her head.

 

He is standing right at the glass, looming over her, looking down at her. She jumps and scrambles backwards on her hands and knees before popping to her feet. He just watches her, impassive.

 

She stands there for a moment and waits for her heart to stop racing. He looks impossibly large in that cell. He is a big man, broad and somehow both slender and thick at the same time, and the Jedi clothing makes him look even larger. 

 

“It took you long enough to come inside,” he finally says.

 

She opens and shuts her mouth. Of course he knew, he could probably sense her four corridors away. “I...don’t know why I did,” she says.

 

“You don’t need a reason.” He sounds calm, almost excessively so. “You shouldn’t stay, though.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“It must be...upsetting. To see me.” He sounds resigned, as if there could be no other reasonable way for her to feel.

 

“Yes, it is. But not for the reason you think.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“It’s...I have all this anger, all this rage toward one man. I’d like to kill him, to tear him apart and make him suffer.

 

“I deserve no less from you.”

 

“That’s the problem. I don’t see that man here. You look like him, but you don’t feel like him. Not anymore.”

 

“I  _ am _ him,” he says, his voice sharpening. He turns away and returns to the center of the cell, dropping smoothly down into his meditation position. “Don’t ever forget that I am him. I did those things, I caused that rage. I deserve your hatred.”

 

“Luke says that hatred is the fastest…”

 

“...path to the Dark Side,” Ben finishes. “I know his words better than you do.” He tents his fingers before him and closes his eyes. “Please leave.”

  
She thinks about staying, about meditating, too. In the end, though, he’s asked her to leave, and she can’t think of a reason to stay.


	2. Day 6

**Day 15**

 

He is meditating, as usual.

 

After returning from her mission with Poe, she’d resumed her habit of coming here after lunch. Ben hasn’t spoken to her since that day she’d tried to probe his mind. He is always meditating. She wonders that she hasn’t caught him napping, or coming out of the bathroom, or brushing his teeth...but of course, he can sense when she is approaching. If he wished to engage with her, he could easily put off his meditation.

 

She isn’t so easily dissuaded. But then, he already knows this.

 

So she sits. Usually for an hour. Sometimes less, sometimes more. Sometimes she meditates. sometimes she just sits and watches him. Twice she’s brought a book. Today, she sits down on the floor in what is starting to be “her” spot. She does not meditate; it has brought her little but frustration the past few days.

 

She pulls out a small metal sphere, barely larger than a pea. It’s a practice bead, used for fine-tuning one’s control of the Force. She sits cross-legged and levitates the sphere with the Force. She holds out her hand, fingers splayed, and guides the sphere slowly, weaving a path through her fingers, around her thumb, and back again. The idea is to speed up the sphere, going faster and faster around the fingers without touching the sphere to skin. She is still fairly slow. She repeats it, bounces the sphere off her ring finger, tries again. Her fine control has some deficiencies.

 

She falls so deep into focus on her practice that she doesn’t notice him until he speaks.

 

“You’re doing it wrong.”

 

She yips in surprise, the sphere falling to her lap. He has left his meditation pose and is sitting casually by the front wall of his cell, leaning his shoulder on it, not two feet from her. “Wha...what am I doing wrong?” she said. “I’m doing fine, thank you.”

 

“With as advanced as you are in other areas, this should be easy for you by now.” He lifts one hand and makes a casual gesture. The sphere lifts again and zooms through her fingers, smooth and sure, and much faster than even Luke had demonstrated it to her. He takes it through several turns and then the sphere drops back to her lap. “And I haven’t done that exercise in years.”

 

“How can you use the Force through these shields?” she says, alarmed.

 

“The Force only prevents my escape, not any use of it.”

 

She is troubled by this, but lets it go for now. Something else he said pops to her mind. “As advanced as I am?” she retorts. “How do you know how advanced I am?”

 

“There isn’t a lot going on with the Force around here. What there is, I’m keenly aware of.”

 

She grits her teeth and tries again with the sphere. She does it without bumping her fingers, but can’t manage much speed. “This is silly.”

 

“I always thought so, too. It isn’t a practical skill. Why bother?”

 

“Just as you say.”

 

He sighs. “A skill need not be practical to be valuable. Sometimes the benefit is in the discipline of practice.”

 

“Are you auditioning to be a Jedi Master now?” She can’t keep the sneer from her voice. He says nothing. Her sarcasm doesn’t really merit a response. “All right, then, what am I doing wrong?”

 

“You’re trying to move the sphere through your fingers.”

 

“Well...yes. That’s the whole idea.”

 

“No, it isn’t. The idea is to move the  _ Force _ . That is always the idea. You cannot use the Force to make a rock move. A rock can’t move on its own. What moves is the Force itself, and the rock moves with it. It is not the sphere that moves, but the Force surrounding it.”

 

She looks at the sphere, hovering patiently, waiting for the next attempt. “Why did Luke never put it like that?”

 

Ben frowns. “Didn’t he? That’s how he explained it to us.” His face falls. “Us,” he repeats, softly. Rey realizes that he’s thinking of his fellow students, Jedi trainees...the ones he killed. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s let himself remember their faces. Some of them must have been his friends. He shakes his head and returns his attention to her. “Try it again. Focus on the Force, not the sphere.”

 

She tries to do as he says. The sphere moves through her fingers, more smoothly and a little faster. She’s amazed at the difference just a small tweak in her thoughts made. “Hey, that worked.”

 

“Better.” He nods a little.

 

“What else do you have?” she says.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Tips. Training techniques.”

 

His face hardens. “I am not the one to ask.”

 

“Come on. Share! You’re more experienced. You trained for...how long?”

 

“My uncle began training me when I learned to walk.”

 

“I started a year ago. So ease up on me.”

 

“What is it you think I can teach you?” he says, suddenly thunderous. He gets to his feet, looking eight feet tall from her vantage point on the floor. “Do you want to know how best to efficiently murder a large group of people who trust you?” He throws the words like daggers, and they hit their mark. Rey shudders and feels that latent rage boiling again. “Or how to drive your master nearly out of his mind? How to destroy your mother? How to kill your own…” He stops, clamping his mouth shut over the tumble of words. He turns his back. “I am not fit to teach anyone anything.”

 

“You offered, once. You said you could show me the ways of the Force.”

 

He whirls back around, his face wilder than she has seen it since he’s been here. “That was not benevolence! I had no desire to make of you a better, stronger, Jedi! I merely wanted to possess you, possess your power and deliver you to my master. I was so desperate for someone, anyone I could control and who would look to me for guidance, someone who could be an equal…” He reins himself back; it is visible on his form. He drops back into meditation position and steadies his breathing. “That offer was not made out of pure intentions.”

 

“You were lonely,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“You wanted a companion. A student, a...partner.”

 

“I wanted to deprive the Resistance of a powerful ally. It was strategic.”

 

She shrugs. “If you say so.”

 

He turns his back and stands at rest, hands clasped behind him. She knows the posture. He’s done talking. She sits there, making her sphere go faster and faster between her fingers, until she hits the skin. She gets up, casts one glance at his broad back, and leaves.

 

**Day 18**

 

Luke finds her doing her morning forms. For quite some time, he would do them with her, but lately he has left her alone. She enjoys the solitude. One is never really alone on a base, even a large one like this. Close living quarters, communal eating, lots of meetings, lots of training. Time to herself, to just feel the Force, feel her own body, relish her strength as it grows daily...it is precious time.

 

She senses him before she sees him. She turns and he is sitting on a nearby bench in the empty training gym where she is going through her forms. She has chosen it because it has windows. “Master,” she says, surprised to see him.

 

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he says. “I knew you’d be alone.”

 

“That sounds ominous.”

 

He takes a deep breath, and she knows what he’s about to say. “I haven’t said anything about your daily visits to our prisoner.” His construction is deliberate. He does not call him Kylo Ren, as that is a name the man himself has asked not be used, but he will not yet call him by the name he was born with.

 

“I knew you would if you had anything to say about it. Do you?”

 

He looks down at his hands. “I am not certain.” He meets her eyes. “It depends on why you go.”

 

“I don’t know if I can explain it.”

 

“Are you hoping to understand why he did the things he did? Do you seek satisfaction? Revenge? Does it please you to see him caged and powerless?”

 

“Maybe. A little. I’m just...I’m more curious about why he changed, there at the end. Why was it suddenly possible to do what he couldn’t do before? He was committed enough to the Dark Side to kill his own father when he could easily have come away with us.” A shadow crosses Luke’s face at the reminder of his friend’s death. “What was it that weakened that resolve?”

 

“Do you really not know?”

 

“Are you saying that you do?”

 

Luke rises and walks a few paces away. “My nephew felt alone his entire life. His parents were often distracted. He was always held apart by the other children because of who he was. I wasn’t much better. We all pursued our glorious ideals, our higher purposes. We loved him, but we often forgot that we also had to raise him.” He turns toward her. “He was so strong with the Force as a child that he frequently outpaced my training. When others began to come, his skill isolated him, as did his famous parentage. I distanced myself so I could not be seen to favor him. Snoke had been preparing him for many years, and when he finally reached out to him, his mind was ripe for it. He craved belonging, companionship, and Snoke offered him not just those things, but also power and superiority.”

 

“But what changed?”

 

A small smile creases Luke’s lips. “He met you. And he remembered he wasn’t alone.”


	3. Day 20

**Day 20**

 

He isn’t meditating. He is putting himself through lightsaber forms, a phantom weapon in his hands, held in the correct position. He doesn’t acknowledge her, but then he rarely does.

 

She watches for a moment, then she strips off her cloak and stands outside the cell, aligning her body with his, and begins executing the forms with him. She lets her mind go calm as she takes her body through the muscle-memory movements. That is part of the purpose of the forms. Focus on the physical frees the deeper mind to delve to depths that conscious life distracts from.

 

His form is impeccable. She has learned from Luke, but Luke is not as flexible as he used to be. Some of Ben’s movements have a much broader sweep and deeper flexion than she is used to. She matches his motions, and feels the form sink deeper into her. This feels right, more right than the forms she has been doing.

 

He goes through the usual series and starts over. She follows. The Force flows through her, and brings to her glimpses of what is in his mind. It is turmoil, much more than she has sensed in the past. He looks composed, and his forms are beyond reproach, but his mental focus is torn to shreds. She steels herself as she sees his memories of the Jedi massacre, of faceless, nameless killings on a dozen distant planets...and then the one she knows is coming but can’t quite brace for. She saw it from a distance, but now she must see Han Solo die up close. The shock, the pain, the sadness...the heartbreak as he reaches out for one last touch of his son’s face.

 

Ben staggers and breaks form. He drops to his knees and curls into himself. Rey drops her arms and stands there, watching. “Leave me,” he cries out.

 

“No. Someone should see this. Someone should see you remember it.” She kneels near the cell wall and puts her hand on it, feeling the Force shield thrum through her body. “You killed him. You took him from us, from your mother, from Chewie, from Luke. You took him from  _ me. _ ”

 

“And who are you?” he says, turning to look at her, his eyes blazing, wet and red, his face blotchy and flushed. “You knew him for a few shorts  _ days. _ He was my  _ father. _ I wanted to  _ be him. _ ” These last words are torn from his throat, shouted and hoarse. The pain zings through Rey’s body like a shock. 

 

Tears are running down her face. “How could you? How could you do it? Your own…” She swipes her hand across her face. “I spent years,  _ years _ , watching and waiting for my family to come for me. I went to sleep every night and dreamed about what you threw away!” She pounds once on the glass and falls back to her rear, off-balance. 

 

She watches as Ben’s face...dissolves, is really the best word she can think of. It folds in on itself like a star collapsing. He lets his head drop and she hears his wail of anguish as she leaps to her feet and out the door. 

 

She stands in the corridor, chest heaving, and looks up to see General Organa stride around the corner, walking fast with purpose, her face tight. She stops when she sees Rey. She glances at the door and then back at her. Of course, she’s probably sensed her son’s distress. Rey is only surprised that she responded.

 

They exchange a silent look, and then the General turns on her heel and walks away.

 

**Day 21**

 

She does not go to his cell today. After watching the General turn her back on him again, she had run out to the mountain past the base, running until her thighs burned and her lungs ached. She had sat at the summit and stared at the setting sun until the chill had driven her back inside.

 

Today, she goes about her business as if nothing happened. She trains, studies, works, has lunch with Finn and Poe, neither of whom mention her daily visits to the cell, and fixes BB-8’s wonky stabilizer. He’s been pulling to the right when he rolls lately.

 

Finn sits nearby and watches her as she works. “You’re not going to see him today?”

 

She glances at him. “No. Yesterday was...rough. I thought I’d give him some space.”

 

“I doubt he sees your visits as taking his space away.”

 

She shrugs. “Maybe I need space, too.” He fidgets a little. “What?”

 

“What?”

 

“Spill it.”

 

“I just wonder why he’s still in a cell. If everyone agrees that he really turned away from the Dark Side, then...is it only for punishment?”

 

“What if it is?”

 

“Then I should be in a cell, too.”

 

That gives her pause. “But...did you ever actually kill anyone? I thought the raid on Jakku was your first mission.”

 

“It was. And I didn’t kill anyone. But I helped. I was part of it. I was responsible.”

 

“You weren’t responsible. You were conditioned to be a stormtrooper. It was all you knew.”

 

“Isn’t that what Snoke did to him, though?”

 

“I...don’t really know. I do know that he was born to loving parents and given every chance to become a Jedi, but instead he turned to the Dark Side. He made a choice. He should pay for that choice.”

 

“He was only 15.”

 

She snorts. “Someday I’ll tell you what I was doing when I was 15. You know what I wasn’t doing? Turning to a life of evil.” She focuses on BB-8’s stabilizer for a moment. Finn is quiet. “You seem pretty eager to believe in him.”

 

“I guess I’m just attached to the idea that anyone can be redeemed. That everyone deserves a chance to make amends.”

 

“Has he done that?”

 

“Well, he can’t do much from inside that cell, can he?”

 

She goes quiet. “He can own up to it.”

 

**Day 23**

 

She goes, because she no longer knows how not to.

 

He is not meditating, or doing forms, or anything else. He is curled on his side on the floor, not moving. She watches him for a moment just to be sure that he’s actually breathing. She scoots to the wall of the cell and puts her hand on it, them immediately jerks it away.

 

The power of his pain burns like she’s placed her hand on a hot stove. 

 

He shudders, a low, agonized moan escaping him, and curls tighter into himself.  Rey steels herself, then puts her hand back on the wall. The burning is familiar now; she lets it settle into her arm. “Ben?” she says, quietly.

 

He doesn’t respond.

 

She swallows hard. “Let me...I could help.”

 

He lifts his head and slowly turns to look at her. “There is no help. Not for me.” 

 

They feel it at the same time. Ben sits up partway; Rey stands and faces the door to the corridor.

 

Luke enters. He doesn’t acknowledge her, but goes right to the cell. To her knowledge, this is the first time he has set eyes on his nephew since his confinement. Ben looks caught, like an animal in a trap. He is disheveled and haggard. She can see the weight of his past dragging at him. It will drag him under forever if there is no hope of salvation.

 

For the first time, she is aware that she doesn’t want that to happen.

 

“Rey, leave us please,” Luke says, quietly.

 

She nods. She looks at Ben one last time; he meets her eyes with resignation.

 

She leaves.

 

**Day 24**

 

She had waited for Luke to emerge from Ben’s cell for hours. She had waited first in the corridor, then in the training grounds where she and Luke worked. Finally she had gone to the evening meal and then to bed, curiosity robbing her of sleep.

 

Today, when she goes to her favorite exercise room to do her forms, Luke is there. He speaks without preamble.

 

“He is coming to terms with the things he has done.”

 

“He’s only just getting to that? What has he been doing all this time?”

 

“Centering himself in the Light as best he can, strengthening his resolve before opening the doors to what Kylo Ren did. But he knows that he cannot ever stand fully in the Light without facing the Dark within him. That is where he is now. It is the most difficult part of this journey he must make.” He looks at her. “Your visits help him. He will not say so, so I am saying it for him. Continue, if you will.”

 

Rey sits down, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. You said his redemption began when he met me. Why me? Why am I important?”

 

Luke is quiet for a time. “When my father turned to the Dark, he turned to it utterly, almost irretrievably. It was never like that for my nephew. He never belonged fully to the Dark. He wanted to, thought he could, but he had too much innate Light to ever walk the path of Sith. He knew it, and it tormented him. Killing his father was his last, desperate attempt to commit himself to the path of darkness, and even then, he almost couldn’t bring himself to do it. But the moment he had done this unforgivable thing, he turned around and there you were. Another strong with the Force, like him, perhaps the first one like himself he’d met in many years. He knew of the Light in you, he knew your strength. And his first instinct was to reach out to you, try and connect to you. When he could not, he had to hate you and destroy you for what you represented...his chance to save himself, and many others. He may have thought that he wanted to pull you into the Dark. I believe what he truly wanted was for you to pull him back to the Light.”

 

Her head whips around. “That is not my job. I am not his guiding angel of goodness.”

 

“No. And his redemption is not your responsibility, only his own. But as Jedi, it is our duty to aid all those who seek the Light. I don’t know how much I can help him.” He sits at her side, looking more weary than she has ever seen him. “He is on the edge. It is not a question of which direction he will fall, but of how hard his landing will be. When the dust settles, I believe that we will reclaim the man called Ben Solo, who was once a boy that I loved as if he were my own son. A boy I failed.”

 

“He failed you, too,” she whispers.

 

“But when it came to the end, he was who he was born to be. We must help him leave Kylo Ren behind, and reclaim that legacy, his birthright.” He meets her eyes. “Will you help him?”

 

It isn’t a fair question. Luke surely knows that there’s very little she wouldn’t do for him. But if she is honest with herself, this would not be for Luke, but for Ben himself. “Yes. Only...I don’t know how.”

 

“Yes, you do. You are already doing it.”


	4. Day 40

**Day 40**

 

She has come to him every day since her conversation with Luke and taken him through the spirit forms. The lightsaber forms are for the body, and to center the mind, but the spirit forms flow through the physical being with pure streams of the Force. They tap into emotions so that the Jedi may master them. She has broken down in tears while doing the spirit forms more than once. She knows that they will be difficult for him.

 

She is not wrong.

 

He gamely tries to follow her from inside his cell, sometimes losing the flow of the movements. She does not stop, or correct him, or comment on his lapse, merely continues on as if she hasn’t even noticed, and he rejoins her when he can. His body resists the forms, as if his mind fears what they may lead to and is provoking minor rebellions in his muscles. He struggles, but he soldiers on, sometimes with tears on his face. Sometimes he loses his composure entirely and has to sit on his cot and weep. She proceeds through the forms, repeating whichever sequence she is on until he can resume with her.

 

The forms take an hour. If the first hour is especially bad for him, she repeats it, and stays for another hour. 

 

The first day is a disaster. The second, only partly. The third is fairly calm. The fourth is a worse disaster than the first. And so it goes.

 

By the tenth day, they have had two good, relatively calm sessions in a row. After another emotional, difficult day, then there are two more calm ones. Rey doesn’t know if what she is doing is what Luke wanted, or even if it is what will help him the most, but it is all she can think to do, and it seems to be doing  _ something. _

 

This is the fifteenth day. He is calm and centered. He follows her through the forms smoothly, without lapses. When they finish, she gives him a small bow, as has become her habit, and turns to leave.

 

“Wait,” he says.

 

That’s new.

 

She turns. “What?”

 

He is standing near the glass, shifting from foot to foot. “You...need not leave.”

 

“That sounds like you wish me to stay.”

 

“Perhaps we could...talk?”

 

“You want to talk?”

 

“We used to talk.”

 

“We barely talked. Mostly you meditated.”

 

“I wasn’t really meditating.”

 

“I know. I was there.” She walks close to the glass. “You were waiting.” He nods. “What were you waiting for?”

 

“For the world to end, I suppose. For someone to come and just put me out of my misery. I almost hoped for it.”

 

“Because then you wouldn’t have to face anything.”

 

He nods, looking miserable. “That doesn’t seem to have worked.”

 

“This is what had to happen.” She sighs. “I’ll stay if you want.”

 

He perks up a little. “Thank you.” He looks around his cell as if he’s wondering if he should ask her in and make her some tea. “I guess...let’s just sit.” He drops down into his meditation pose. Rey does the same, facing him through the polyglass.

 

Long beats of silence pass.

 

“You’re the one who wanted to talk,” she says.

 

“Only now I don’t know what to talk about.” The barest hint of a smile quirks the corner of his mouth. Rey is amazed to see it there.

 

They sit in silence for a few more moments. “Luke’s having his hand covered in bioflesh again,” she finally says, just for something to say. “I don’t know why he waited so long.”

 

“Maybe he got used to it.”

 

“How did he lose his real hand?”

 

He blinks. “Don’t you know?”

 

“I think everyone just assumes I know, so nobody has told me, and I’ve been too embarrassed to ask.”

 

He nods. “He lost it in a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader.”

 

“His father?”

 

“He didn’t know that at the time. Actually, he found out about two minutes after he lost his hand.” He looks thoughtful. “Come to think of it, Anakin had a robotic hand, too. Before he became Vader, and half of his body became robotic. He lost most of one arm in a lightsaber duel when he was a Padawan, before he married my grandmother.”

 

“It sounds like the men in your family need more lightsaber practice.” She frowns. “Do you have any robotic limbs?”

 

“No. I still have all my factory-issue parts. A few dings and scratches.”

 

“Me, too.” She smiles, he returns it, and for a moment, they could have been two people having lunch and making casual conversation. Then she remembers that some of his dings and scratches are courtesy of her own lightsaber, and one in particular is from Chewie’s crossbow. And that some of her dings and scratches - not to mention the horrific scar up the middle of Finn’s back - had been delivered by his hand.

 

She looks up at him and sees that he’s tracking these thoughts as they cross her mind and probably her face as well. “I’m sorry, Rey,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I...don’t know how to say it better.”

 

“Say it again.”

 

He scoots a little closer and holds her gaze. It is a heavy, loaded gaze, weighted down with all he has done to her, and to others. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words laden with despairing sincerity. All she can do is nod. It isn’t an acceptance, it is barely an acknowledgment, but it’s all she has for him right now. He shifts out of meditation position and hikes up one knee, turning sideways to her. “It’s like...it was a nightmare,” he says, speaking low and towards the far wall. “Every day it seems further away, and I am more separated. I watch myself doing the things I did from a distance, I scream at myself, I shout, but I can’t change any of it. It’s a nightmare that never stops, never changes, and I can never wake up.”

 

“You could have turned away from the Dark Side at any time.”

 

He nods. “It’s easy to see that now. And part of me always wanted to. I woke up every morning with one task: to put out of my mind the fact that I’d made a horrible mistake. But admitting that mistake was...I couldn’t do it. I was so twisted up that I chose to…” He stops and looks away, swallowing hard. “I chose to kill my own father to prove that I’d done the right thing.” Tears spill down his cheeks. “I can never take that back. I can never be whole again. I can never go back to who I used to be. I killed my fellow students. I hurt you, I hurt your friends, I destroyed my mother and drove my uncle into exile. Everything that has gone wrong is my fault.”

 

“You’re giving yourself too much power,” she says. “Did you ever stop to think that if you hadn’t turned, Snoke would have turned someone else?”

 

He blinks, and she can see that no, he hadn’t thought about that. “That doesn’t change the fact that I did those things. Do I deserve redemption? What have I done to earn forgiveness?”

 

“Well...you saved my life, to start.” She hesitates. “And you destroyed Snoke.”

 

He meets her eyes. “I couldn’t have done that alone.”

 

**Day 42**

 

“I need you to tell me why,” she finally says, after debating with herself about whether to ask for some time.

 

He meets her eyes. “Why I turned away from the Dark?”

 

She nods. “I need to hear it. And I think you need to say it.”

 

He is sitting close to the glass, and so is she. If there were no barrier between them, their knees would almost be touching. “I don’t know if I can put it into words.”

 

“Try.”

 

He stares at his large hands for a few moments before speaking. “When I killed…” He trails off. He can’t seem to make himself give words to the act today. “I thought it would make me stronger. I thought it would be the ultimate proof of my devotion to the Dark. But I felt weaker. So weak that I could barely muster the rage to fight you and Finn.”

 

She remembers something. “You kept striking yourself, where Chewie shot you. Like you wanted to be in pain.”

 

“Pain is a shortcut. The sensation is neither light nor dark, it simply exists. But if you use it to access your rage, it is a potent enhancement. I needed it. I was right on the edge. I didn’t realize how much until later. Then when that you called that lightsaber to you, I thought...Gods and stars, there she is. It’s her.”

 

“Her, who?”

 

“I didn’t know. I’m still not sure.” He sighs. “I spent a week recovering from my injuries, and with every day, I felt everything wavering around me. Snoke had cut me off from him as punishment for my failure with you. In a way, he sealed his own fate. I didn’t have his voice in my head for the first time since...well, since I can remember. And when he returned, it felt hollow and false.” He raises his eyes to hers. “That last battle...my heart wasn’t in it. I’m sure that much was obvious. My father’s last words to me were that Snoke would crush me when I was no longer useful, and I knew that he was right. It was all a lie, none of it had been real. None of it had been who I really was. And just like that...the man I used to be, the man I was supposed to be...he’d been bound and gagged and suddenly he was loose again.” He shrugs. “And he stepped up.”

 

“Just like that?”

 

“No, not just like that. You’ve been inside my head, you know how it was.”

 

She nods. “I have been inside your head. I don’t know how you bear it.”

 

“I bear it because I have no choice, and it is my penance."

 

**Day 43**

 

“Tell me about Jakku.”

 

She is idly floating her sphere through her fingers. She’s getting faster and faster at it. “What do you want to know?”

 

“You never talk about it.”

 

“There’s nothing to say. It’s a barren sandy wasteland littered with wrecks of old Imperial ships. It’s a shithole.”

 

He shakes his head. “I don’t know how you lived there alone for so long and still you’re…”

 

She looks up. “I’m what?”

 

“You know,” he says, making a vague gesture toward her.

 

“No, I don’t.”

 

“You’re  _ you _ . You’re good and noble.”

 

She shrugs. “I’m just trying to get by.”

 

“No, that’s what you  _ used _ to do. Now you’re doing so much more than just getting by. You’re part of something here. You’re giving people hope.”

 

She goes still, the sphere dropping into her palm. “You could be part of something here, too.”

 

“Sometimes I think the best thing I can do is exist. Give people a focal point for their rage.”

 

She shakes her head. “Don’t you know what you represent?”

 

He frowns. “What?”

 

“You’re the ultimate proof that the Dark Side is weak. If even after all you did, all the years you were under its influence, you can still toss it aside and come back to the Light, what does that say about the Dark?” She leans forward and puts her hand on the polyglass. She feels the slightest tendrils of hope in him, hope that he can have a purpose again, stand among friends again. He lifts his hand and presses it to hers through the polyglass. “They look at you and know that the enemy can be defeated.”


	5. Day 44

**Day 44**

 

She is sitting on the hill with Finn and Poe. This is their favorite spot. It overlooks the lake behind the base; on a clear day when the mist lifts, you can see across to the civilian settlement.

 

Rey is quiet. Finn and Poe are talking about Finn’s flying lessons, teasing each other about their latest screw-ups and the prank war they’re running against the maintenance department. The thrum of their affection, their ease, and their closeness passes over her, but she feels apart from it. She’s always felt a little separated from them. While they have been flying, fighting, learning and goofing off, she has been training. They are always there for her, but they cannot be there for her.

 

“You’ve barely said a word tonight,” Poe says, during a lull. He passes her the flask of Mandalorian brandy he probably stole from Chewie.

 

She takes a drink. “I talk too much all day. I like the quiet. Or I would, if you two Jawas would quit jabbering for more than five seconds,” she says, smirking at them. They laugh, taking their turns at the brandy.

 

Poe goes a bit quiet. “Do you talk to Ben? A lot?”

 

She shrugs. “Sometimes we talk. Some days I just take him through the spirit forms and then leave.”

 

“And how…” He clears his throat. “How’s he doing?”

 

“Well, his spirit forms are getting easier. I know that the intelligence officers have been talking to him. He’s given them a lot of useful information. The other day he…”

 

“No, Rey...how’s he  _ doing? _ ”

 

She sighs. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Better, that much is for sure.” She looks over at Poe, whose jaw is clenched. “What?”

 

“I’m just not sure I want him to be better.”

 

“Yeah, I get it.”

 

“You had it the worst with him. If you’re ready to help him, I don’t have anything to say about it.”

 

“You have something to say about it too, Poe. You have history with him, a lot more than I do. He hurt you, personally.”

 

“I put that behind me a long time ago. I had to.”

 

“He’s…” She stops and reformulates. “It’s like he’s coming out of a trance, sometimes. He’ll remember things that he did back then and it’s a shock, like his brain didn’t let him see it until that moment. He’s just beaten up by it constantly. Part of me thinks, well, good. He should be beaten up. But I saw his face when he turned away from Snoke. I don’t think any of us will ever understand what that took. I sensed him in that moment, and just a glimpse was...let’s just say sometimes I can’t sleep because I can’t stop remembering it.”

 

“Well, if nothing else, he should get better for practical reasons. He’d be a real asset.”

 

“Is that how you see him?” Finn said, speaking up for the first time. “An asset?”

 

Poe’s eyes widen, realizing how that probably sounds to Finn, who’d spent most of his life with a serial number for a name. “No, I just mean...he’d be a powerful ally. We have two Jedi now...and no offense, Rey, you’re badass but you’re not fully armed and operational yet…”

 

“No offense taken, and no argument.”

 

“...but if he could get past this, if we all could, we’d have three. That’s a fifty percent increase in Jedi. And one with intimate knowledge of First Order operations.”

 

She looks out across the lake. “I can’t see him like that. Like a tool that we’re going to use. I don’t want to see any of us like that. If he can come back, it can’t be so he can be  _ useful. _ It has to be because he’s  _ worthy. _ ”

 

Poe is looking at her oddly. “You like him, don’t you?”

 

Her head whips around. “What?”

 

“You...I mean, don’t get me wrong, I get it. Last time I saw him he was a weedy teenager, but now, he’s all...not that. I wouldn’t have thought that was your type, though.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Yeah, what  _ are _ you talking about?” Finn says, looking puzzled.

 

Poe looks from one to the other, his mouth opening and closing, then he shuts it with a snap. “Never mind. I didn’t say anything, I don’t know anything, I’m just...sitting here with this brandy.”

 

Rey frowns. “You think I am sexually attracted to him?”

 

Poe splutters. “Uh...well, I wasn’t going to be that direct about it.”

 

She shrugs. “Direct is what I prefer.”

 

“Then yeah.”

 

She thinks for a moment. “I don’t know. I’m...connected to him. Somehow. I don’t always like it, but it’s there.”

 

“Is it the Force?” Finn asks, leaning forward. He is endlessly fascinated by the Force and those who practice it. Rey has had to gently ask him several times to please stop asking her to float things or freeze things in midair.

 

“It’s partly the Force. He is the one who first began to teach me to use it.”

 

“He is?”

 

“Yes. When he tried to read my mind, I...it’s hard to explain. I felt how he was doing it, and I pushed back the same way. I felt something click, and that’s when it began.” She stares at the grass. Was she...what Poe says? She thinks of Ben and tries to be objective about it, divorce herself from the implications and all the baggage they brought. She tries to think of him only as Ben, and not...who he used to be. She knows how she responds to him through the Force. Does her body respond? She’s never been aware of it, but now…

 

She fidgets. “Well, he is...tall. That’s...good.” She looks from Poe to Finn and then back again. They glance at each other, then burst out laughing. “What?” She grins in nervous confusion. “What’d I say?”

 

Finn’s on his side, holding his stomach. “Tall is good,” he giggles.

 

“Very good,” Poe says, through loud brays of laughter. “It’s good to be tall.”

 

“Of course you wouldn’t know anything about that,” Finn says, shoving Poe over.

 

“Look who’s talking!” Poe says, shoving back. They fall into a mock wrestling match, punching and shoving at each other and rolling around in the grass. 

 

Rey sighs, exasperated. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re not just using that as an excuse to cop feels,” she says.

 

“Who needs an excuse?” Poe says, grabbing Finn’s ass.

 

“Hey!” Finn retorts. “Rude!”

 

She gets up. “Boys,” she sighs, exasperated. She leaves them to their laughter and their wrestling, knowing that once she’s gone, they’ll probably transition to other activities best left uncontemplated.

  
  


**Day 45**

 

Today when she arrives, he is sitting on his cot, reading. He has his back to the wall and one knee hitched up. He looks calm, and as relaxed as he gets. She stops short just inside the door, absorbing the blow delivered to her gut at the sight of him.

 

Poe may have been on to something.

 

She swallows past it and goes to the cell. He looks up and smiles at her - she powers through that little catastrophe without a twitch or a flutter - and marks his place. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming today,” he says, getting to his feet. It is later than usual. She doesn’t ponder the question of why she delayed.

 

“Well, here I am,” she said, tossing her cloak to the chair that sits there for this purpose.

 

“Good.” She senses his relief at her arrival, his pleasure at seeing her, and his wish that she would stay longer. She wonders what, if anything, he is sensing from her. She is trying to be as blank and unreadable as possible, but she has no illusions that she can hide from him.

 

She nods at the book. “What are you reading?”

 

“A Jedi training text. Luke gave it to me.”

 

“I don’t think I’ve seen that one.”

 

“I’m sure you will.”

 

She assumes the opening posture. “Shall we?”

 

He nods, and does the same.

 

The forms proceed smoothly today. He is controlled, precise. She can sense his grief and his regret - she doubts there will ever be a time when they leave him entirely - but he is managing them, if not mastering them. When they finish, Rey debates just picking up her cloak and leaving. It’s not as if he can stop her. But it might seem...odd. Post-forms conversation has become normal. He would wonder why if she left so abruptly. 

 

So she sits down, as does he. He asks about her training. She tells him about Finn’s new job training the troops on stormtrooper weapons tactics. He asks about the Republic, how things are going, what’s being done to round up the remnants of the Order. She tells him what she knows, which isn’t as much as it probably should be.

 

After a lull, he speaks again, sounding hesitant. “Do you talk to General Organa?”

 

“Yes. When she needs to talk to me.”

 

“I mean, do you...spend time with her? Have you gotten to know her?”

 

“Why are you asking me that?”

 

“You’re the sort of person she’d taken an interest in. I just thought…” He shrugs and trails off, and in the moment he looks about fourteen, unsure of himself and passing it off as indifference.

 

She leans in a little. “Are you asking me if I’m friends with your mother?”

 

He looks up at her. “I guess I am.”

 

“I wouldn’t say friends. She is very busy, all the time.”

 

“I know.”

 

She asks, even though she knows the answer. “Has she been to see you?”

 

“No. I don’t want her to.”

 

“Don’t lie to me.”

 

His head jerks up. “I’m not lying!” He sags a little. “I want her to, but I don’t want her to. I want her to because there are things I’d want to say to her, but I don’t because I don’t want to cause her more pain than I already have. As if that were possible.” He stares at his hands for a moment, perhaps seeing them gloved in black, wielding that unstable lightsaber. “I think...he knew.”

 

“Han?”

 

“Yes. I think he knew that someday I would go back, and I...did what I did because I knew he was right. Just after I…” He stops and reins himself in. “Before he fell, he looked at me. Touched my face. I don’t know if you could see, from where you were.”

 

“I could,” she says, her voice tight. “I saw it all.”

 

He meets her eyes. “I think he forgave me. He knew why I did it and he...forgave me.”

 

“I...I think you’re right,” she says, tears welling in her own eyes.

 

His head falls down to his chest and she sees his shoulders shake in silent sobs. One hand flails up and presses against the polyglass, a wordless plea. She lifts her own hand, hesitates, then presses it to his. His grief flows through her, his regret...but the tinge of darkness is gone from it. She lets her own feelings surge between them. He shudders and moves closer to the glass, resting his forehead against it. 

 

Rey slowly leans forward and presses her own forehead to his. “I forgive you,” she whispers. He says nothing, but she feels a dark chasm in his heart open and fill with light. It spills out and rushes through them. She puts her other hand to the glass and he mirrors it. She goes quiet and still, eyes closed, feeling the Force flowing between them.

 

She feels lighter, and in the moment, she’s not sure if that’s coming from her or from him.

 

**Day 46**

 

She asks to see the General after breakfast, and is granted permission. In the General’s quarters, where she has never been.

 

She waits outside the door, nervous and trying to calm herself. At the appointed time, the door opens and the General’s aide shows her in. She looks around as she walks through. The quarters are large and relatively homey. She sees photographs of the General with Luke and Han. A photo of her with Han and a small dark-haired boy that must be Ben. She wishes there were a graceful way to dash over and look at it, but there isn’t.

 

General Organa is sitting at a table, drinking coffee and reading dispatches. She smiles broadly when she sees Rey. “Good morning,” she says, motioning her into the chair at her side. “I hope you don’t mind coming here. I have a full schedule today and this was my only available time. I should have invited you here ages ago, though. Forgive me.”

 

“Oh, no, it’s...I’m honored.”

 

Leia chuckles. “Honored to sit here while I drink coffee, before I’ve put my boots on? You’re easily impressed.” She puts down her cup and turns to face her. Rey sees that she probably knows what this is about. “Your message said it was important.”

 

“Yes, General, it’s…”

 

“Please. Call me Leia.”

 

“All right...Leia,” Rey says, struggling to get the name out and have it sound casual. “It’s about Ben.”

 

Leia is still for a moment, then she sighs and nods. “I thought it might be.” She stands up and goes to the window. “I know you have been visiting him every day. Helping him with his...recovery.”

 

“Yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Rey shuts her eyes and gathers her courage. “I think it might be time to consider setting him free.”

 

Leia doesn’t move. “Release him from his confinement, you mean?”

 

“Yes. It’s been weeks and weeks. At least discuss it with the leadership.”

 

She turns. “The leadership wanted him freed last month. I chose to keep him confined.”

 

“You? But...you haven’t even been to see him!”

 

“No, I have not. I have nothing to say. I cannot stand to…” Leia puts one hand over her eyes. “I know it must seem terribly cruel to you.”

 

“No, it doesn’t. I understand. I felt that way, too.” She gets to her feet and goes to Leia’s side. “You don’t know. He hates himself more than we ever could.”

 

Leia’s eyes soften. “But I do know. You think I cannot sense my own son’s emotions?” Her eyes well up. “I must seem cold and heartless to you. I wanted him back, when I sent Han to Starkiller Base. I sent him there, and he died trying to do what I’d asked. I don’t know if I can forgive Ben for that. I know I cannot forgive myself.”

 

“I don’t know if this means anything, but...Han forgave him. Even as he died, he reached out to him. He knew that someday, he would want to return, and he wanted him to have his father’s forgiveness when he did.”

 

“Can you forget what he did?”

 

“No. I can never forget, none of us can. Least of all him. But we have to move on, move forward. He is ready to face the Light, and accept what is past. But he can’t do that alone.”

 

Leia reaches out and clasps Rey’s hands in hers. “You care for my son, don’t you?”

 

Rey’s breath catches. “I have come to...feel a connection to him.” Leia tilted her head. “Yes. I care for him. I want him to have the chance I had, and Finn had. To reinvent ourselves, leave who we were behind and find a way to make it right.”

 

For a long moment, Leia just looks into her eyes. Rey does not sense her through the Force, but she feels herself being gently probed. Finally, the General nods. “Then he will have that chance.”

 

Before Rey can respond, an alarm sounds.


	6. Day 46

**Day 46, continued**

 

The fight does not go well.

 

The Order’s strike force had arrived with only a few short minutes of warning. Pilots were scrambled, troops were deployed. Finn stays at her side as she and Luke run with a squad to defend the central communications hub. If the Order get control of it, they can access the entire Republic information net, and it would be disastrous.

 

They are pinned down outside the hub, fighting off wave after wave of stormtroopers. Rey and Luke’s lightsabers deflect incoming fire to shield their troops so they can return fire. Their hands strike out with the Force to throw enemies back, pull their weapons away, and disrupt their charges.

 

But they just keep coming.

 

She is on one side of the entrance with part of the squad, Luke on the other. She is struck a glancing blow in the arm by a blaster - painful, but not debilitating. She sees Luke take a shot to the leg. That is a problem. Her year’s experience with using the Force in battle is being sorely tested, and, she fears, found wanting. Fear and adrenaline crowd out her focus. She grits her teeth and holds on, the Force guiding her saber and powering her hands, but she feels herself fracturing.  There are simply too many. She senses that Luke is badly hurt, but she cannot go to him. At her side, Finn and his squad keep firing, but her ability to deflect incoming fire is diminishing.

 

The stormtroopers sense their advantage and begin to move in. Rey stands, bracing herself. She pulls in, hard, pushes her hand out and throws one, then another of the troopers against the wall...but there are a dozen more, all firing.

 

She pulls in again and raises her hand, but before she can do anything, four of the stormtroopers fly violently backwards. The rest of them stop and begin falling back. She looks over at Luke...had he? But he is staring behind them, eyes wide. She turns and her mouth falls open.

 

Ben stands at the door of the hub, hand outstretched, a green lightsaber in his other hand. He jogs forward and raises the saber. There is no time to absorb this, only to react. He meets her eyes and they share a quick, businesslike nod, and dive back in.

 

They push forward, Ben’s saber flashing almost too fast for her to track. She feels her energy surge and coalesce and she powers on, tossing one stormtrooper after another into walls, into trees, into each other, with one hand while deflecting blaster bolts with her own saber. Four troopers run at them from the right; Ben leaps into the air, flips over their heads and cuts them down before they can so much as turn around. He runs back to her side.  “Nice,” she says, low.

 

“Showy, I know.”

 

“Whatever works.” She feels his mind brush hers; to her relief, she detects no darkness in him. No anger, hate or violence - just determination. She sweeps her saber and sends a blaster bolt back at the trooper who’d fired it, and then...suddenly that is the last one. She straightens up. “Are we done?”

 

Finn pops up from behind the half-wall he’s been using for cover. “For the moment. They’ll send another squad. Let’s regroup.”

 

She and Ben power down their sabers and go to Luke. “Are you all right?” she says, kneeling at his side.

 

He grimaces, his leg blackened. “I’ll be fine. I just don’t know if I can stand.”

 

Ben gets an arm underneath his shoulders and lifts him to a sitting position. “We need to get you back to headquarters.”

 

“There’s no time. Finn’s right, they’ll send another squad. That hub is their ultimate goal, we can’t leave it unprotected.”

 

Finn comes up to Rey’s side. “Master Skywalker, two of my men are going to carry you back to medbay. We can’t have you stay here, we can’t spare the soldiers to protect you and we can’t risk you being injured further.”

 

Luke looks about to protest, then just nods. Two soldiers run up with a litter. Rey watches as Ben lifts Luke right off the ground and puts him on the litter. “Wait a moment,” Luke said. He reaches up and grasps Ben’s arm. “You could have gotten out of that cell anytime you wanted, couldn’t you?”

 

Ben looks a little sheepish. “I was in there for a reason. And when this is done, I will return to it.”

 

Luke turns to Rey and squeezes her hand. “You are ready for this,” he says. She nods, and they carry him off.

 

Finn stands before her. “What now?”

 

She gathers her thoughts and pulls herself back to the present. “We need to protect the hub. Our absolute last resort is to wipe the operating circuits and shut it down, which will cripple the network for awhile but it’s better than letting it fall to the First Order. Send a group down to the core with orders to get that option ready if it’s needed. We don’t have enough people left to defend from out here, we should fall back into the antechamber, seal the outer doors, and hope to wait it out.”

 

Finn nods. They look around - down to half a dozen soldiers, herself, and Ben. Finn motions to the small group. “Into the building.”

 

They go inside and shut the doors, sealing them. Finn looks up at the ceiling; Rey knows that look. He has exceptional hearing and he is picking up something. “Oh...oh shit,” he mutters.

 

They go to the porthole in the blast doors and look out. A drone is hovering outside, lowering some kind of weapon with four legs and a complicated counterweight system. A half dozen stormtroopers drop out of the drone and set to work on the weapon. “What...is that?” Rey asked.

 

Finn sighs. “It’s a breach engine - a weaponized battering ram. It fires a stream of colonized plasma that’s like a wrecking ball. It’ll demolish the entire forward half of this building, including these blast doors. They’re not going to bother with another frontal assault, they’re just going to force their way in.”

 

Rey takes this in. “How long to set it up?”

 

“Three and a half minutes.”

 

She looks up at Ben and sees her own thought mirrored there. He nods. She looks at Finn. He isn’t going to like this.  “I need you to take the rest of your soldiers downstairs to the hub. Ben and I will try and disable this weapon before it’s live. There’s only six of them. We need to buy as much time as possible for air support to disable the strike force before we resort to wiping the hub. If they get past us, don’t let them get down there, but if they do, execute the wipe.”

 

Finn frowns. “No, I won’t leave you here alone.”

 

She takes a breath. “I won’t be alone.”

 

“You can’t…”

 

“You’ll do more good at the hub. Remember what’s important.” She clasps his shoulder. “It’ll be all right.”

 

He nods, then looks up at Ben. For a moment, she is sure Finn is about to admonish him to take care of her and prepares an angry retort, but then Finn just looks back at her. “Keep an eye on him,” he said. “He’s probably out of practice.” He drops her a wink, then pulls his soldiers back.

 

They just stand there for a moment, then rush to the blast doors and look out. The stormtroopers are assembling the breach engine. “He’s not wrong,” Ben says. “I am out of practice.”

 

“You did just fine five minutes ago.”

 

“I know you must have questions about…”

 

She flaps a hand. “Not now. We’ll discuss it later.”

 

“Do you know how long it’s been since I fought without the assistance of the Dark Side?”

 

“Are you implying that the Light Side isn’t as good?”

 

“No, but the Dark comes quicker in a fight. It’s easier and nearer.”

 

She looks at him, really looks, and only now sees his hand shaking. He is pale and sweaty. She reaches out with the Force and senses at once that his focus is wavering. They do not have time for this.

 

“Ben.”

 

He looks at her.

 

She holds up her hand, palm out, facing him. He glances at it, then looks back at her. He raises his own hand and presses it to hers, and their fingers interlock.

 

It is the first time she has ever touched him, skin to skin. The Force connection they share floods her like coming into the cold out of a warm building, an all-over blast that flows up her arm and through her mind. She feels their minds out of balance, hers tired and anxious, his untested and unsure. She holds his gaze and focuses on aligning them. She feels him attempting to do the same. Their breathing falls into rhythm, then their heartbeats.

 

She feels it the moment they lock into sync. It snaps into place like a fuzzy holotransmission that suddenly clears and solidifies, the gears slotting against each other and turning the wheels smoothly. She can feel the pulse of his energy in time with her own, and their shared power surges.

 

Rey makes a motion with one hand, and the blast doors unlock and slide open. Her eyes are fixed on his, but she can see the stormtroopers scrambling as clearly as if she were looking right at them. On a signal only they can perceive, their heads both whip around and their hands stab forward. All six troopers fly twenty feet back. Rey and Ben rise and advance on the breach engine, sabers glowing. Several of the troopers struggle to their feet and fire at them, the blasts are easily, almost casually deflected. Ben twirls his saber, turns in a tight circle and slashes the cannon off the front of the engine. It clanks to the ground and rolls away. Rey plunges her saber through the power unit, metal melting beneath its blade, and the unit sparks and falls dead.

 

Two of the troopers advance on her, but it’s like they are moving in slow motion. Calmly, she turns to face them. Her saber knows its arc before it is swung. One trooper falls, then the other. She looks around to see Ben dispatching three of the others. 

 

They walk around to the front of the breach engine and return to the command center antechamber. She cannot speak. Ben’s presence at her side thrums with rightness. He is equally silent, but she knows that he feels it, too. This is what it must be like, she thinks. To fight alongside other Jedi. She is incandescent, she is transcendental.

 

The scream of a fighter passes over their heads and Rey stops to look up. “Air strikes?” she says.

 

“No, it’s ours!” Ben says, pointing. “It’s Poe’s squadron!” Poe and his squad had been out on maneuvers when the attack came. They’d been immediately recalled, but it wasn’t known if they’d get here in time. And here they are.

 

Rey whoops and pumps her arm in the air. Ben is grinning and she beams up at him. “Did you hear yourself?” she says.

 

“What?”

 

“You said ‘ours.’ The fighters are ours.”

 

He looks down at her, then nods. “So I did.”

 

A TIE fighter screeches overhead, firing towards the communications hub. “We’ve got to get inside and shut the blast doors!” she shouts. “The hub might be compromised!”

 

They run into the antechamber, the outside of the building taking fire. She bangs on the door controls but nothing happens. “I think the controls are fried!” Ben shouts. He has his hand up, using the Force to shield her from incoming fire. “Try bypassing it!”

 

She tears open the console, but before she can even begin to reconnect the wiring, a TIE fighter is hit just above and out from the hub. Her eyes widen as it begins to cartwheel out of the sky...directly at them. “Oh...oh I don’t think we can hold that one off!”

 

“Get back!” Ben yells, pulling her backwards. They both run in opposite directions. She senses the impact just before it happens and throws up her hands, shielding herself with the Force, and then several tons of rubble surround her. She strikes something, the back of her head hits hard, and everything goes dark.

 

**Day 46, continued**

 

... _ rey… _

 

_...where are you… _

 

_...rey can you hear me… _

 

She jolts awake with a gasp. Everything is dark and smoky, and she feels like she’s been encased in carbonite. She can barely move. She hears movement nearby, voices, grating noises and thuds. What she does not hear is a battle. It must be over.

 

She tests her limbs and the feeling in her body. Everything seems intact - she can remember throwing up a last-ditch Force bubble around herself, that must have shielded her from injury. She’ll be bruised to hell and back, though.  She wriggles her shoulders; she can’t move her arms from her sides to push at the debris covering her. And who knows what that would do? Might make it collapse further.

 

She hears Finn’s voice. “Where was she?”

 

“She was right with me. I didn’t see where she ran when the fighter hit.” Ben’s voice. He sounds worried. “I can’t sense her, Finn.”

 

“Teams are on their way to help search. We’ve got to keep looking! I’m going to check below - part of the floor caved in here, she may have fallen through.” She hears Finn run off.

 

“Rey!” Ben shouts. His voice is tinged with panic. It does something to her stomach to hear it. “Rey, where are you? Can you hear me? Make a noise, something, if you can hear me!”

 

She grits her teeth. Dammit, she’s not going to lie here and wait to be dug out, that could take hours. She shuts her eyes and refocuses. She reaches for that synchronicity she and Ben had found, but within her own body. She knows it is there, she has touched it before. She listens to the clickwheels turn, align, and...lock.

 

She opens her eyes, flexes, and the debris bursts off of her, the daylight flooding in. She lets out a huge breath and gets to her feet.

 

Ben is staring at her from across the remains of the communication hub’s antechamber. “Rey!” he exclaims, scrambling over chunks of concrete and blast door to reach her. She grins and starts towards him.

 

They meet in the middle and Ben scoops her up into a tight embrace. Rey wraps her arms around his broad shoulders, standing on a hunk of debris to reach him. “Are you all right?” he says, into her shoulder.

 

“Yeah,” she says. She can’t stop smiling. “I’m okay. You?”

 

“I’m good, yeah.” 

 

Rey’s mind comes back online a bit and is mildly surprised to find that she is hugging Ben Solo. Two months ago she could not have imagined such a thing, or even one month ago. But now it feels right. He is solid and strong and thrumming with the Force, as is she. She lets the tension leave her body a little and settles into him. He feels her relax and pulls her closer. “Is it over?”

 

“I hope so, or we’re going to be caught very much off guard.”

 

She hears hurrying footsteps and sees Finn emerge from the corridor, half-running. He must have heard her blowing herself free. His face goes slack with relief upon seeing her, then his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline when he realizes who she’s hugging. She grins at him, and pulls out of Ben’s arms. She feels his reluctance to let her go, but the moment’s passed.

 

She goes to Finn and he gets a hug, too. “Is the strike over?”

 

“Yes. Poe’s squadron cut off their air support. They never had a ship in orbit, so once they shot down all the fighters, it was just down to cleanup.”

 

She looks over at the unrecognizable remains of the TIE fighter that smashed into the building. “Yeah, cleanup is going to be a bitch.”

 

The sound of transports approaches, crunching over battle debris, and two four-wheelers pull up with a troop carrier right behind. General Organa hops off the first four-wheeler and approaches them; Rey sees her draw up short at the sight of her son standing behind Rey’s shoulder. Rey feels Ben stiffen, all his relief and calm evaporating.

 

Leia composes herself and turns to Rey. “Is the hub secure?”

 

“Yes, General. The strike force never penetrated the building.”

 

“Medics are on the way,” she said. “Luke is already there. His leg should heal fine.”

 

“Good,” Rey said. She is starting to feel a bit woozy herself. Probably a delayed reaction.

 

Leia refocuses on Ben as her aides bark orders in the background. She walks forward a few steps and stops.  “Ben?” she whispers.

 

He hesitates. Rey feels a brush against her hand; she reaches back and squeezes his fingers. He squares his shoulders, then walks forward to stand before his mother. The sight is almost comical. Leia is a small woman and he looks like a giant in comparison. “Hello, Mother,” he says. Rey sees a shudder pass over Leia when she hears his voice.

 

“How did you get out of...oh, of course,” Leia says. She lets it drop. “I...am sorry I have not been to see you.”

 

“I understand.”

 

She swallows hard. Everyone in the vicinity is watching while trying to go about their business like they aren’t. Except Rey and Finn, who are just standing there staring. Leia’s chin is quivering. “I didn’t know if I could forgive you,” she whispers.

 

He looks down to stare at the ground between them. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he says.

 

She takes a step closer, and he raises his eyes to hers.  “You are my son,” she says. It seems to be all she can bring herself to say.

 

Tears are running freely down his face now. “I’m...I’m sorry,” he says, his voice hoarse and choked. He falls to his knees before her and his shoulders slump as he weeps. Rey flails behind her and somehow finds Finn’s hand. He grips it tight, then steps to her side and puts his arm around her. The pull of Ben’s emotions on her is strong. Her head spins with it, her stomach rolling.

 

For a terrible moment, she is sure that General Organa is going to look at her son, weeping on his knees at her feet, and turn her back on him. Rey doesn’t know how much there’ll be left of him if that happens. But then, Leia hesitantly extends a hand and touches his shoulder, then his hair, then his face, and then she is pulling him hard into her arms.

 

Rey shivers all over. Ben wraps himself in his mother’s embrace and cries. She sees tears on the General’s face as well. She presses her face to her son’s hair and keeps moving her arms and hands over his back and shoulders, as if she can’t quite find the right position to hold him close enough. “Are you all right?” Finn murmurs. “You’ve gone white as a sheet.”

 

Sure, she starts to say. I’m fine. But before the words can reach her lips, she pitches backwards, a wave of darkness washing over her. She’s dimly aware of Finn catching her, then there’s nothing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think Rey and Ben's moment of Force-bonding there is reminiscent of Tara and Willow's first time doing magic together, you're 100% correct. That's the image I had in my head for that scene.


	7. Day 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter than usual, but there wasn't a good spot to stop until...well, where it stops.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos! I'm glad you're enjoying the story. Comments are an author's lifeblood!
> 
> Oh, and nobody's asked yet, but I thought I ought to say that I am cleverly dealing with the question of Rey's parentage by ignoring it completely. I'm a proponent of the Kenobi theory, personally, but this story takes no stance on this and doesn't address her ancestry or her possible relation to Ben.

**Day 47**

 

She wakes up in the medbay, which isn’t really a shock. She blinks a few times and wiggles her toes and fingers. Everything seems to be in working order.

 

“Hey,” says a soft, familiar voice.

 

She looks over at Finn’s smiling face. “Hey, yourself.”

 

“How are you?” He leans over her and puts his hand on her forearm.

 

“I don’t know. How am I? What happened?”

 

“You had some internal bleeding from when the rubble fell on you. You must have been crazy amped up to last as long as you did. They went in and...I guess fixed it. You don’t look like a ghost anymore. You were in the bacta tank until this morning."

 

“How long have I been asleep?”

 

“The battle was yesterday afternoon. It’s after supper now.”

 

“Oh. Wow.” She looks around; she seems to have a private room with all the amenities. When her gaze slides around to the other side of her bed, she smiles. There is a two-seat couch against the wall, and Ben is sort of half-folded into the corner of it, his head tilted uncomfortably against the wall, fast asleep. 

 

She looks over at Finn. “Yeah, he wouldn’t leave,” Finn says. “He's stayed with you since the battle."

 

She sighs. “He’s going to have an awful crick in his neck.”

 

“If he weren’t so damn tall he could lie down.”

 

“He really is unnecessarily tall.” She turns back to Finn. “How’s Luke?”

 

“He’s fine. He’ll be walking with a cane for a few days. I should go tell everyone you’re awake.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead. “Back soon.”

 

She nods, and Finn gets up. He pauses on his way out and shakes Ben’s shoulder. Ben jumps a bit. “Wha...huh?”

 

“Look who’s up,” Finn says, nodding toward Rey. Ben looks, sees her open eyes, and jolts into action, ignoring Finn's departure. He grabs a chair and is immediately at her bedside.

 

“Hey,” he says. “How do you feel?”

 

“I think...fine? I had internal bleeding?”

 

He nods. “You passed out.”

 

“Yeah, I remember. How embarrassing.”

 

“Well, if it helps, you passed out in a very graceful swoon. You didn’t just thump to the ground like a sack of potatoes.”

 

“That’s me. Always graceful,” she says, smiling.

 

Ben takes her hand, hesitantly like he’s not sure this is allowed. He lowers his eyes for a moment, blinking fast. Rey says nothing. He holds her hand so gently, as if he’s afraid she may shatter if he exerts too much pressure. “I...was very afraid. That you...when I saw you fall, I…” He trails off.

 

She smiles. “I’m tough. You know I am.”

 

“Yeah, I know better than most.” He smiles back. She turns her hand in his and wraps her fingers around his palm. He sighs and seems to relax, minutely. “It’s strange, a bit,” he says.

 

“What is?”

 

“Not to have that glass wall here. To be able to do...this,” he says, squeezing her hand a little.

 

She’s remembering now what happened at the battle, including his sudden appearance in it. “Whose lightsaber was that? The one you were using?” she asks. She wondered about it at the time, but mid-battle hadn’t been the time to ask.

 

“Mine. The one I used...before. I built it myself. I don’t know where it was being kept, but it came right to me when I summoned it.”

 

Rey smiles. “Your mother had it in her quarters.”

 

He looks a little devastated to hear that. “Oh.”

 

“What Luke said, it’s true, isn’t it? You could have gotten out of that cell anytime.”

 

He is quiet for a moment. “Yes, I could have. But I deserved to be in there. Don’t think it wasn’t tempting. But when the battle started...I had to help.”

 

“And you said you’d go back there, when it was over. But...here you are.”

 

“I wasn’t going anywhere while you were hurt. And…” He clears his throat. “I’m told now that I’ll not be going back. I’m to be assigned quarters. The leadership has decided to end my confinement.”

 

“You mean your mother has decided.” He inclines his head, acknowledging the correction. “Before my...uh, swoon, I saw you with her. I  _ felt _ what you were feeling.”

 

He nods, staring down at their joined hands. “I felt you with me the whole time.”

 

“I hoped she would forgive you.”

 

“I’m not sure she ever really will. Nor should she. But now, at least she’s willing to try to get past it.”

 

“Have you...talked?”

 

“Not really. I’ve been here. But we will. I can sense her now, more than I could. I think she was blocking me before.”

 

The door to her room opens and Poe enters with Finn and Chewie, followed by a doctor. There is much exclaiming, great loud exhortations of joy and relief. Ben drops her hand and retreats to the door as the doctor begins checking her vital signs.

 

When she looks over at the door again, he is gone.

 

**Day 49**

 

Rey is released after two days of recovery. She feels more or less okay, still sore and tender, but ready to return to her own quarters. Finn hovers over her like a worried mother as she walks across the base to the residential quadrant. “You shouldn’t be walking this far,” he frets. “I should have gotten you a transport.”

 

“I’m really fine, Finn. Calm down.” BB-8 scurries at her feet, doing little loop-the-loops ahead of them on the pavement, chirping excitedly. 

 

Yes, she is fine, absolutely fine. She is definitely not feeling sad or disappointed that she hadn’t seen Ben again after his departure from her room soon after she’d woken up. She’s not feeling forgotten or neglected at all, nor is she worrying that she won’t see him much anymore, now that he’s no longer confined to a glass box and probably has better, more interesting things to do.

 

They reach her quarters. “Poe’s sorry he couldn’t be here for your homecoming,” Finn is saying. “They’re really drilling everyone hard since the attack. I almost feel sorry for Solo.”

 

“Oh, why is that?” she says, putting on a nonchalant tone.

 

“They’ve had him in debriefings almost nonstop. I don’t think they even let him out to sleep. Nobody’s seen him.”

 

Rey is downright embarrassed at the degree to which this bit of information fills her with relief. “Oh, so he’s been shut in with the intelligence officers.”

 

Finn, she can tell, is not fooled. “Yeah, almost non-stop.” He steps a little closer, smiling. “Come on, Rey. Don’t you know that he’d have been at your bedside every minute if it were at all possible?”

 

She is very interested in straightening the sheets on her bed. “Well, I did...wonder. Why I hadn’t seen him.” Finn says nothing. She turns and sees him looking at her with a knowing expression. She flops down onto her cot and stares at her hands. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she says, quietly.

 

“Yeah, you do.”

 

“I can’t. I can’t be...it just can’t.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because! Finn, you know...the things he did! It happened, it all still happened, no matter what’s happening now, that doesn’t really change anything. We can pretend it does, but it doesn’t.”

 

He sits down at her side. “But, see...that’s why it matters what happens now. We can never change what’s past. All we have to go on is what happens now. I’m just an ex-stormtrooper, I don’t know the ways of the Force, or much about what happened to him. What I do know is that he broke out of a cell, found a lightsaber, and came charging in to help us. And I also know that when we couldn’t find you in the rubble, I’ve never seen a guy so panicked.”

 

She looks at him. “How can he live here, exist here, among people who he helped hurt? How would...anything...even work?”

 

“Rey...there are a lot of people who are praising him for what he did. Both at the end of the war, and then the other day.”

 

“There are?”

 

“I mean, there are still people who want to skin him alive, but...not everybody. So whatever worst case scenario you’re imagining...don’t. The only thing that matters is, how do you feel?”

 

“I don’t know,” she whispers.

 

“Then there’s your next challenge.”

 

**Day 52**

 

Rey spends the first few days out of the medbay gradually increasing her activity level. She goes to meals in the mess hall, she meditates, she takes herself through her forms, and she exercises. Poe does some light sparring with her, just standard hand-to-hand, no Force required. 

 

She does not seek out Ben, nor does he seek her out. He is probably picking up on her reluctance to see him, and respecting her boundaries. She finds out through the grapevine that he’s moved into regular quarters, and has been assigned some duties mainly relating to intelligence, and his vast knowledge of First Order facilities and tactics. She also finds out that he and Luke are having regular lightsaber practice, and that these sparring sessions are beginning to draw crowds.

 

Which is how today she finds herself sneaking up to a walkway that overlooks the training yard and hiding herself amidst a cluster of people gathered to watch, not examining too closely her reasons for wanting to stay concealed. A smattering of officers and soldiers and staff are clustered around, watching the sparring. She watches them go at each other, hard. Luke is no longer a young man, but the Force makes him light and strong, and his experience makes him creative. Ben is young and fast, almost brutally intense, his size giving him an advantage in reach over Luke. It is fascinating. They move almost too fast to track, the sabers flashing and tracing light trails through the air, throwing off sparks as they clash and hit, again and again. 

 

The gathered onlookers are rapt. Most of them have probably never seen a Jedi in battle before, only heard tales, and to see two highly skilled practitioners test each other is a sight that has not been seen in the Republic for decades.

 

Rey tries to pay attention. She tries to watch their techniques, take mental notes for the next time she is the one sparring. 

 

She tries.

 

Why does he have to be so damn distracting?

 

She watches, gritting her teeth, as Luke feints right and rolls, but Ben is a step ahead and spins to block him. Everyone cheers, and Ben looks out at the onlookers, coincidentally in her direction, and beams a wide smile.

 

She turns away fast. Damn it, damn it, she thinks. Damn it all to hell. She feels that familiar warmth spreading in her belly and bolts. Walk it off. Just walk it off.

 

Rey is no stranger to sex. Her life on Jakku had been celibate, for practical and physiological reasons. Not only was it dangerous to make herself vulnerable, nor were there any suitable partners, but she hadn’t been nourished or hydrated enough to expend much physical energy on such an activity.

 

But once she’d gotten here, everything had changed. Sudden safety, coupled with being well-rested and full-bellied for the first time in her life, had sent her libido into overdrive. Not to mention that she was surrounded by fit people in their prime of all genders and species. It was hard to know where to begin. What she hadn’t wanted was...an attachment. She had Finn and Poe, they had each other, she had her mentor and she had Chewie, and anything else felt extraneous, like a distraction. 

 

She’s had a number of friendly, casual encounters over the time she’s been with the Rebellion. It hasn't been difficult to attract partners. She is somewhat notorious on base as the new Jedi prodigy, and while she has no real basis to judge her own attractiveness, the feedback she receives from others is almost universally positive. She’d worried that being sexually active would hamper her training, but Luke reassures her that a Jedi must be the master of all her urges, and since this one would never be suppressed, the best strategy was to satisfy and manage it.

 

She doesn’t ask how  _ he i _ s accomplishing that. No questions are forbidden between student and Master, but that just seems a question too far.

 

No one has ever presented a temptation into a deeper relationship. If someone had told her a year ago that she’d be pondering the implications and practicalities of pursuing one with Kylo Ren, she’d have shown them the business end of her lightsaber. Kylo, she despises. He is inhuman, a heartless father-murdering monster.

 

But he doesn’t exist anymore. In his place is Ben Solo, who she’s had to get to know on his own terms.  It’s bad enough that she has a connection to him through the Force that goes all the way back to Kylo. Now, it seems that her body has its own ideas about how else she might...connect with him. Ideas she didn't ask for, but can't deny.

 

She retreats to her quarters, changes, and goes to the training gym. She goes through her most difficult forms, sweating freely, focusing only on her body and the discipline of the postures. She repeats the cycle again, until her limbs feel rubbery. She splashes water over her head, drinks a whole canteen, puts on her robe with the hood up and heads to the mess hall.

 

She is crossing the command quad when she sees the General walking with Ben at her side. He is wearing Jedi robes, and they suit him. They appear to be deep in conversation. They pause outside the control center and Rey hurries past, just another grunt on base on her way to lunch, nothing to see here.

 

At the door to the mess hall, she turns back. The General has gone inside the command center, but Ben is still standing there. He is looking right at her, his face aggressively neutral. As soon as he sees her looking, he nods at her and goes inside.

 

Rey stands in the doorway for a moment, a tug behind her sternum pulling at her. She hovers there until someone comes up and looks at her expectantly; she is blocking the door. She turns and goes on inside.

 

**Day 55**

 

A plant. That’s what Poe said. So she is walking down the hall that leads to Ben’s quarters, carrying a potted plant. She feels profoundly silly. She avoids the eyes of the people she passes in the corridor. Yes, I’m just walking down this hallway, carrying a potted plant. Can I help you with something? 

 

She stands at the door for a truly ridiculous amount of time before hitting the buzzer. Stupid, she chides herself. It’s not like he can’t sense that you’re standing out here, whether you ring the buzzer or not.

 

He opens the door and she has to compose herself for a moment. When she was seeing him every day in his cell, she got used to it. But she hasn’t seen him up close since the day she woke up in medbay, over a week ago now. Being this near again is disconcerting.

 

He smiles, but it’s a reserved smile. “Hello.”

 

“I brought you a plant,” she blurts out.

 

He blinks. “Uh...thank you.” He takes it, looking like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with it. “Come in?”

 

“Okay.” She follows him inside. The quarters are similar to her own. A bedroom and a second room for sitting or working. His desk is covered with data chips and hand-drawn notes and maps. Other than that, the rooms are neat as a pin. He seems too large for them. He fills up the space in a way that makes her want to hug the wall. She forces herself to stand in the center, like a normal person. “Is it nice?” she asks. “Having your own space?”

 

He sets down the plant on the table by the couch. “It’s...different. I keep waiting for someone to come and say sorry, there’s been a mistake, back to the glass box.” He is looking down at the plant.

 

She makes a helpless gesture. “Poe said that’s what people do. When somebody has a new place. Bring something. So I brought…a plant.” They both stare at the plant in question.

 

If a hole opened up at her feet and swallowed her right now, that’d be just great.

 

He meets her eyes. “That’s a meaningful gesture from someone who grew up in a desert.”

 

“Just don’t ask me how to take care of it. I have no idea.” He smiles, and she realizes that she can’t really sense him right now. He must be guarding his thoughts. He doesn’t want to let her in, and her heart sinks. “Maybe I should just...I don’t want to keep you.”

 

“Keep me from what?”

 

“I should go.”

 

He blinks. “If you wish.”

 

She offers up a wan smile and turns to the the door.

 

“Rey.”

 

She doesn’t turn around. “Yes?”

 

“I...was afraid that you didn’t want to see me,” he says, quietly.

 

She turns then. He is looking away, his face creased in misery. “You’re not wrong.”

 

“I see.” He nods.

 

“No, no, you don’t. I had to get my feet back under me. I was…” She hangs on to the doorknob behind her and stares at her feet. “I don’t know what I was.” She makes herself look at him. “But it wasn’t that I didn’t  _ want _ to see you.”

 

His eyes widen a little. “You did?”

 

“Yes,” she says, in a rush. “Every day. Every minute.”

 

“Rey,” he says. He says nothing else, like all he’d needed was to taste her name on his lips. He stands there silent, mutely beseeching her, and she realizes that he still needs her to help him with this one last thing.

 

She moves quietly forward until she is standing toe to toe with him. She reaches out and takes his hands in hers, interlacing their fingers, her gaze never leaving his. She feels him shiver a little when she touches him; as soon as the skin contact is made, she can sense him again. She gasps a little as they flow toward each other, her body tingling with the potency of his emotions.

 

She looks up into his face. He looks lost and confused and a little scared, and all her hesitation melts away. She rises on tiptoes and presses her lips to his, gently. He stands absolutely still while she does this, as if he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to respond. She pulls back, just barely, and waits, holding her breath. This close, it is difficult to meet his eyes. He is looking for something in hers; she doesn’t know what, but he must have found it because he slowly closes the distance and kisses her again. It is a deliberate, careful kiss, and it ends too soon when he withdraws.

 

“I...is this all right?” he asks, barely whispering.

 

“I started it, didn’t I?”

 

He smiles a little at his own discomfiture, and suddenly it slams home to her that it’s very possible he has not been this close to someone in a sexual context in a very long time.. She can’t imagine that Kylo Ren was off banging stormtroopers or the second gunnery lieutenant. And he’d only been fifteen when he was turned. A wave of sadness washes over her at this, and his gaze sharpens. “Don’t pity me,” he says.

 

She shakes her head. “I don’t.” She drops his hands and places hers on his chest. She can feel his heart thudding, and his body’s nervous trembling. His hands just sort of hang there in the air where she’d released them. 

 

He looks down at her, his eyes traveling from her face to her hair to her neck. He lifts one hand - the tremble is even visible - and rests it somewhat awkwardly on her shoulder. “Rey,” he murmurs.

 

“It’s okay to touch me,” she says. He nods, and his hand moves down to her waist, soon joined by his other one. She steps a little closer and his hands close behind her back. 

 

He leans down slightly. Rey tilts her head back, but he stops. “Can I…?” he asks, letting the question float.

 

She lifts one hand and smooths a lock of hair out of his face. “Yes.”

 

He smiles and pulls her tighter to him. It is a proper kiss this time, firm and intentional. She tilts into it, sliding her arms up around his neck. Rey feels arousal rising up her spine as their mouths slot together; he is so solid and strong in her arms, and either she’s wrong about his experience level or he’s a natural at kissing. They are both starting to breathe hard. His hands are all over her back now, and she has one of hers tangled in his hair. It is as soft as it looks. Her lips part and she dives deep; he presses back and the embrace grows more heated. 

 

“Ben,” she whispers, in a brief moment when her lips are unoccupied. She feels him shudder when she says his name.

 

Suddenly his hands slide down her back and scoop up the backs of her thighs, and then her feet are leaving the ground as she’s lifted like she weighs nothing. She takes the hint and wraps her legs around his hips; he holds her up easily, one arm underneath her while the other hand slides up her spine to cup the back of her head. She grins down at him, the change in angle giving her unexpected advantage of height.  “I like being tall,” she murmurs.

 

He beams. “Maybe I’ll just carry you around all the time, then.”

 

She cups his face in her hands and kisses him again, working her mouth over his, parting his lips to taste him. He groans a little, then leaves off her mouth to kiss her throat. Rey gasps as his mouth moves over her pulse point and up to the sensitive spots beneath her jawline. She holds his head to her as he begins to walk them over to his couch. A quick moment of vertigo for her and she is sitting astride one of his thighs where he’s plopped himself down. Freed from holding her up, his hands slide over her body and pull her close. She reclaims his mouth, a little whine of arousal slipping out of her.

 

Her mind tries to remind her who this is that she is kissing, just as it tried to remind her all those days of going to his cell who it was that she was helping. It shows her mental images of what he did, who he hurt, who is dead by his hand. But as the time’s gone by, it’s gotten harder and harder to reconcile those images with the reality of the man in her arms, who she’s come to know. He’s talked to her about the schism in his mind, the vast crevasse that separates him from his dark counterpart. That crevasse had started small, so that as a young man he was able to merely step over it, but as the years passes the chasm grew wider, such that even when he had felt the pull to the other side, the leap across seemed impossible. Now, the other side of the chasm, where Kylo Ren in his black robes stands glaring, was receding into the mists, so far away that no one would ever be able to reach him again. All that was left was Ben, and the ghosts that had followed him.

 

After a few more moments of heated kissing, he pulls back. A veil of discomfort falls over his face. “What?” she says, a twinge of dread plucking at her stomach. “Is this...not working for you?”

 

His eyes widen. “Not working...god, no! I mean, yes, it is working for me.” He takes a breath and resets. “Rey, that you’re willing, let alone  _ happy _ to kiss me is the best thing that’s happened to me since...come to think of it, it might be the best thing that’s  _ ever _ happened to me. No, that’s not it. I just need…” He clears his throat. “Just so I don’t misunderstand your intent.”

 

“My  _ intent? _ ” she says, giggling a little. “That sounds so...political.” His arm is around her back and his fingers are making little stroking motions against her side. It’s maddeningly distracting. She tries to focus.

 

“I only mean that given...everything...we should be as clear as possible.”

 

“Agreed. I like being clear. Have I been in some way not clear that I would like to spend the night with you?” She feels him twitch, and almost laughs. Almost.

 

“Well. That is direct.” He smiles at her, and behind it she sees his ghosts, and his demons, and she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that when he renounced the Dark Side, he had not expected to live long enough to explain why he’d done it. And when it became clear that he would live, he had no expectation of being anything but a prisoner for the rest of his life. And when he found out that he’d no longer be a prisoner, he had no idea that he’d be anything but despised by everyone, for all time, but somehow he is here with her, and he can smile at her. Her heart breaks a little, and she is glad for the damn potted plant that brought her here. He sighs, and seems to be gathering his resolve. “But there’s something that I need to tell you first,” he says.

 

“Okay,” she says, puzzled. Then, an awful thought occurs. “Oh...oh God, Ben. Did he...did Snoke...do something to you? So that you couldn’t? He didn’t...cut it off, did he?”

 

Ben’s smile broadens into a grin and he laughs. “No, no. Snoke did not castrate me. I am...uh, let’s say, fully equipped.”

 

“Oh. Good. Then what?”

 

“Well, to continue the metaphor, the equipment is still...factory sealed.” He struggles to meet her eyes. “That is…”

 

She puts her hand on his cheek and turns his face toward her. “Are you telling me that you’ve never had sex?”

 

He sighs. “I had a few clumsy kisses as a teenager. But then...that wasn’t something that was permitted of Snoke’s protege. I had to be remote and untouchable. Literally.”

 

She kisses him, once, twice, hard and deep. He responds, puzzlement coming off him. She breaks off and looks him in the eyes. “Then let me show you,” she says, gently.

 

He nods. “Yes. Please.” He pulls her close. “Rey, I...I never imagined anything like this could happen for me, not now, not ever. I certainly never hoped to deserve someone like you.”

 

“You mean an orphaned scavenger from the back end of nowhere?”

 

“I mean a kind, powerful, beautiful Jedi,” he says, punctuating each adjective with a slow kiss. “You have no idea what you did for me. You, who had more cause to hate me forever than most.”

 

“I thought I was going to hate you forever. That was my plan. To hate Kylo Ren forever, and make him suffer for what he’d done.”

 

“What happened?”

 

She leans in and presses her forehead to his. “I met Ben Solo.”

 


	8. Day 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're earning the M rating with this chapter.

**Day 56**

 

She wakes in his bed. He is still asleep.

 

Rey checks the time, lazily floating her chrono over to her using the Force so she won’t have to move. It’s early; several hours until breakfast. She settles back in, turning on her side to look down at him.

 

He has told her that his sleep has always been plagued by nightmares and violent, shaking, sweaty wake-ups. Now, however, he looks calm, like he’s dreaming of a tranquil beach or a soothing forest. 

 

She smiles. The night they spent together had been...well, she's never experienced anything like it. He had been hesitant at first, then bolder, and infinitely willing to try anything, do anything, that might please her. His enthusiasm was potent; it went straight to her head and fogged her inhibitions into nonexistence. She had climbed him like a tree, her hands greedy for all those miles of skin, his hands seemingly able to hold her whole body just in their wide palms. And when at long last he had pressed inside her, his wide eyes fixed on hers, their connection blazed and flared, and it was like she was feeling not only her own body but his, as well. 

 

She bends and kisses his cheek. “Mm,” he says.

 

“Wake up,” she whispers.

 

His eyes blink open. He sees her, and they widen slightly. He pops up on one elbow and stares at her. “You’re here,” he says, a tone of wonder in his voice.

 

“Yes?” she says, grinning. “Did you think I’d get up and leave in the middle of the night?”

 

“No, I mean...you’re really here.” He reaches out and cups her cheek, and she understands.

 

“Ben, did you ever...dream of me? Being here?”

 

He nods. “Yes. But usually it would start out sweet, and peaceful. We’d be somewhere beautiful, and you’d look...how you look, and you’d hold my hand and then suddenly it would all go dark, and there’d be stormtroopers and gunfire and a red lightsaber, and then your blood would be everywhere…” His words are starting to tumble out.

 

“Hey, hey,” she says. “Just a dream. It’s okay.” He pulls her close and tucks her head under his chin, falling back onto the bed. “I have nightmares, too, sometimes.”

 

“What are yours about?”

 

“About being left behind, mostly. Sometimes it’s seeing my family’s ship leaving me on Jakku. Other times it’ll be Poe and Finn leaving me behind, or running to catch up with my ship and they don’t notice I’m not on board and abandon me.” She hesitates, then decides that they can’t shy away from the hard stuff. “But sometimes I have nightmares about…” She suddenly can’t say it.

 

He says it for her. “About Kylo.”

 

“Yes.” She strokes his smooth chest. This isn’t him, she thinks. This isn’t Kylo. It just isn’t.

 

His arms tighten around her. “I would never hurt you,” he says, quiet and full of conviction. “Or anyone else.”

 

“I know.” And she does know. She knows that  _ he _ would never hurt her. But he has not always been in charge. And now, if Kylo were to somehow return, she doesn’t know if she’d have it in her to strike him down.

 

“You have to,” he whispers.

 

She wonders if she’d voiced her thought without meaning to. “What?”

 

“I know what you’re thinking. Kylo is dead. But if somehow...he weren’t, then you need to kill him. I need you to kill him. I can’t do that again. I can’t let that happen again.”

 

“You won’t. We won’t. You’re not a kid anymore, you’re strong now.”

 

“I don’t always feel strong. I feel like a shadow of who I was supposed to be.” He lifts one hand to pinch his eyes closed. “If I’d never...who would I be? What would we have built? A Jedi force to be reckoned with, galactic peace, a strong Republic. All that fell to ashes because one teenaged boy thought his parents didn’t understand him?” He turns his face away. “You shouldn’t be here. I am not...this is not what’s supposed to happen to me.”

 

She grabs his face and turns it back. “Do you think that’s what happened to you? You felt alone and so you just turned evil?”

 

“Isn’t it?”

 

“No! You were  _ targeted. _ You were  _ programmed. _ Snoke was whispering to you through the Force for a long time, before you were ever aware of it. He sensed that you had the greatest power among the new Jedi, so he set his sights on you and he...he  _ shaped _ you. You fell to the Dark Side, but he greased the rope.”

 

“That’s no excuse.”

 

“No. It isn’t an excuse, it’s an explanation.” She takes a breath. “And don’t forget that when you came back, not only was that rope was still greased, but you had weights tied to your ankles. And yet you climbed out.”

 

“Don’t lionize that act, Rey,” he says. “I don’t get extra credit for doing what I should have done years and years ago.”

 

“Okay. But it shouldn’t be ignored, either.”

 

He sighs and stretches a little. “What time is it?”

 

“0500.”

 

“Whaaat?” he says, smiling. “Why’d you wake me up so early?”

 

She shrugs. “Maybe I missed you.”

 

His face goes serious. His gaze moves over her and he lifts one hand to touch his fingertips to her face. “I missed you before I knew you,” he whispers. She can’t muster the wherewithal to respond to that. He pulls her close and kisses her, his hands moving over her nude body, warming her skin and pulling arousal into her belly.

 

She kisses his face all over, threading her fingers into his hair. She can’t seem to stop touching his hair. “Ben,” she whispers. “I want you.”

 

“Do you?” he whispers back, between kisses. “I can hardly believe that you really do.”

 

She can feel his erection against her thigh. She pushes him over onto his back and straddles him. He groans as she slides herself down on him, sighing as she is filled. His large hands find her breasts as she moves over him, her hands braced on his firm chest. He pulls her down, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her, one hand sliding down her back and around her hip to touch where they are joined. After a few moments, Rey cries out and comes, clenching around him until he follows her, burying his face in her riotous hair, freed from its constraints and falling around their faces.  She tucks herself into him, gasping for breath. She can feel his heart beating fast beneath her hand; he is kissing her forehead. “Gods and stars,” he says. “I never knew...I never imagined it would be like that. Is it...always?”

 

“It depends. On who you’re with. For me, it’s been nice, and it’s felt good. But...it’s different with you. I can feel you, through the Force. And I know you, more than I knew the others.” She lifts her head and kisses him, slow and languid. “You probably know me better than anyone, except maybe Finn and Poe.”

 

“Then I am in good company.” He smooths her hair back, looking at her with such an expression of besotted wonder that it makes her breath catch a bit. She wonders what her own face looks like right now. 

 

She kisses him again. “C’mon, Solo. Let’s get moving. We’re up, we might as well make use of the time.”

 

**Day 56, cont’d**

 

“I...don’t know about this.”

 

“It’ll be fine. Really.” She is at the door of his quarters, one hand on the knob. He is standing in the middle of the room, his arms folded and his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe, looking profoundly apprehensive.

 

They had gone from Ben’s bed to the training room and sparred for a while, then done some forms. They’d returned here to shower - which had led to shower-sex up against the tiled wall, and boy she’d be feeling that in her thighs later - and everything had been fine. Up until she’d suggested that they go to the mess for breakfast.

 

“I’m just used to getting my meals here,” he says, fidgeting.

 

“You haven’t taken  _ any _ meals with the rest of the base?”

 

“No. I didn’t...want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

 

“You didn’t want them to be uncomfortable, or you were afraid of how they might react?”

 

“Both! Rey, those people out there, they hate me.”

 

“They don’t all hate you.”

 

“A lot of them hate me, and they have good reason to do so. I respect their right to hate me. It’s bad enough that they know I’m here, they shouldn’t have to  _ see _ me on top of it.”

 

“You have a right to exist.”

 

“Do I?” he says, throwing his arms wide. “I’m not so sure.”

 

She comes back over to him and takes him by the arms. “Ben, I get it. I see why you think that. But you can’t get past this if you won’t get past it.” She frowns. “Uh, pretend that made sense.” He chuckles a little, looking down at her fondly. “If you’re going to live here, be a part of this community, then you have to be part of it. And facing people who might say angry things or look at you a certain way is just part of the price you’re paying for who you used to be.”

 

“I can’t ever pay for it.”

 

“Maybe not. But you can at least not hide from it.”

 

He sighs, then nods. “Will you…”

 

“I’ll be right with you. And listen, we’ll sit with Finn and Poe. Everyone worships Poe, if they see that he’s okay with you, then most people will fall in line.”

 

“Is he okay with me? Poe and I were friends once.”

 

“Yes, I know, he’s told me. He’s not the kind to hold a grudge, he’s a good guy.”

 

“Yeah. He is. Always was.” He squares his shoulders. “Okay. Let’s go.” She turns toward the door, but he pulls her back. “Kiss me once more first?” he says.

 

Rey shakes her head. “What have I gotten myself into?” But she kisses him anyway.

 

They walk to the mess side by side. They pass a number of other people on the way; nobody looks twice at them. But then, he has been a common enough sight around the base for the past week, it’s nothing new.

 

He stops short when they reach the door to the mess hall. It is about two-thirds full of people, eating breakfast. As if some sixth sense has warned them, everybody looks up. She feels Ben go rigid at her side. It gets quiet. Nobody looks particularly hostile, but then, neither do they look welcoming. They’re just staring.

 

She spots Finn and Poe across the room. Finn stretches up, waving at her with a broad smile. “Come on,” she says. She reaches out and takes his hand, which he grasps immediately. They walk across the mess, a wave of murmurs following in their wake. She doesn’t think she’s too keen to know what’s being whispered about her holding hands with him, here in front of everybody.

 

They sit. “Good morning,” Poe says, amiably enough. He’s eyeballing Ben, though. “Haven’t seen you in here before.”

 

He sits at Rey’s side, across from them. “No, I’ve been keeping to my rooms, mostly.”

 

“Well, it’s good to get out.”

 

“Is it?” Ben says, quietly. An awkward beat of silence passes. “Poe, look…”

 

Poe holds up a hand. “Ben, let’s not, okay? It’s not going to do either of us any good to rehash the past. Let’s just...pretend we’re just meeting, and you’re my friend’s new...friend, I guess. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, but I trust her, so let’s leave it at that.”

 

Ben nods. “Okay. Fair enough.”

 

Rey is asking Finn questions with her eyes. He is facing out towards most of the people in the hall - all she can see is the wall behind him - and he looks past her, assessing the room. He looks at her, shrugs and gives her a brief nod. She relaxes minutely.

 

A serving droid wheels by. Rey snags him and punches in their breakfast order. The droid wheels on. Ben is fidgeting a bit. “I need some coffee,” he says, spotting the dispenser across the room. “You want some coffee? I’ll get you some,” he says, before she can answer. He gets up and heads over.

 

Finn and Poe are immediately leaning in toward her. “Okay, what’s up?” Poe asks.

 

She shrugs. “I spent the night with him.”

 

They both stare. “Like...exercising? Training?”

 

“Having sex,” she says, not in the mood to beat around the bush. “Which is a form of exercising, I guess.”

 

“Whoa, whoa,” Finn says, holding up his hands. “You did not say that this was something you were considering.”

 

“Yeah, I did! Remember we had that whole talk about what was going on, and I didn’t know…”

 

“I guess you figured it out.”

 

“Guys, cut me a break. He and I...I don’t know. We’re connected. I have...feelings.”

 

“Big messy feelings?” Finn says.

 

“Yeah, you could say that.”

 

“Well, he’s looking at you like you hung the stars,” Poe says.

 

“Is he?”

 

“Oh, yeah.” Poe smiles. “But half the guys around here look at you like that, so…”

 

She tosses a napkin across at him and he cackles. Ben returns, two cups of coffee in his hand. He sets one in front of her, taking his seat at her side. She stares down at it. “How did you know I like it light and sweet?”

 

He shrugs. “I know things.”

 

She looks at him, and makes a snap decision she hopes she won’t regret. She leans in and kisses him, full on the mouth, knowing damn well that the entire mess hall is watching them out of the corners of their eyes. She pulls back and returns to her coffee, as if nothing happened. He is staring at her, dumbstruck. Finn’s giving her the smirky-eye, and Poe just looks resigned.

 

Breakfast proceeds normally. Poe gets Ben talking about Imperial ship design and they are off to the races. She doesn’t say much, just eats her vegetables and drinks more coffee. It isn’t completely comfortable, but neither is it uncomfortable. She can sense them being watched, but nobody approaches.

 

After breakfast, they walk across the quad to the training yard. She isn’t really surprised to see Luke standing there, waiting, arms tucked into his sleeves. She and Ben exchange a glance. “Ben, could you give us a moment, please?” Luke says, not taking his eyes off her.

 

“Of course.” He looks down at her again, then trots off and into the building.

 

She sighs, then stands before Luke. “I might as well tell you the truth.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“I slept with Ben last night.”

 

Luke is still, then he chuckles. “Is that so?” he says.

 

“Yes. Why is that funny?”

 

“It isn’t. What’s funny is that you think I don’t already know that.”

 

“Oh. Of course.” She sighs and rubs the back of her neck. “Is this...bad? Are you going to make me run laps until I pass out?”

 

“Honestly? I don’t know if it’s bad or not. He seems more centered this morning. You seem less so. Has this unsettled you?”

 

“No. I mean...I don’t think so.” She sighs. “Everything with him is complicated. It was complicated when I was just visiting him because I couldn’t stop doing it. It was complicated when we were kind of friends. And now it’s complicated when we’re lovers.”

 

“His past is something you cannot deny, or forget. You can only move forward. But if you cannot move forward in peace, then it is best to stop.”

 

She considers this. She thinks of the first time she’d been face to face with Kylo Ren, the fear of being immobilized, the dread of his presence. And then the terrible act he’d committed, the horror of seeing Han fall into nothingness.

 

But then she thinks of Ben, facing Snoke, lightning striking him again and again, advancing, staying on his feet, his face blazing with determination. She thinks of him weeping in his cell, of his mother embracing him, of the look of awe on his face the first time he touched her bared skin. “I want to move forward. I can do it. I’m just not sure everyone else can.”

 

“You can only control yourself, Rey. The reactions of others are not your concern.”

 

She nods. “Please tell him that I am going to the high meadow. I need some time alone.”

 

Luke inclines his head, acknowledging. Rey takes off a jog, keeping her eyes forward, not looking around lest she see who might be watching her go.

 

When she returns, after lunch, she finds Ben on his way out of the mess hall. He lifts a hand when he sees her. She trots up and kisses his cheek in greeting. “I see you navigated lunch without me,” she says.

 

He shrugs. “I sat with Finn and Poe again. Where have you been?”

 

“Just thinking.”

 

He doesn’t ask. “How about some lightsaber sparring this afternoon?”

 

She grins. “You’re on.”

 

His answering grin warms her. He takes her hand and they set off towards the practice grounds.

 

They don’t get far.

 

Four younger pilots, who look vaguely familiar but are unknown to her, suddenly step into their path. “I was gonna let it go,” one of them says to Ben. The name embroidered on his uniform is Patrok. “You’re here, you turned against Snoke, I get it. It’s all fine. But this?” he says, nodding at Rey. “This is taking it too far, Ren.”

 

She sees Ben’s jaw clench. “That is not my name.”

 

“It should be. You should have to keep that name, so you never forget what you did,” Patrok says, his voice tight. Rey can sense pain behind it, and she knows that this man lost someone to the First Order. Probably several someones. “You shouldn’t get to reclaim your father’s name after you murdered him.”

 

She feels Ben flinch, and her protectiveness flares. “I don’t think that’s your place to judge,” she says, stepping partially in front of him. “Also, how dare you tell me who I should or should not associate with? I’m not some kind of prize that needs protecting.”

 

Ben draws her back a little. “For whatever pain I caused you, directly or otherwise, you have my sincerest apologies,” he says to Patrok. “I can’t change what happened. I can only act honorably going forward.”

 

“Yeah. It’s super honorable to seduce our last Jedi apprentice.”

 

“He didn’t seduce me!” Rey exclaims.

 

“Oh, so you bedded this monster on your own?” he sneers. “Is evil some kind of turn-on for you?”

 

Rey starts forward again but Ben holds her back. “Apologize to her,” he says, his voice low and calm.

 

Patrok isn’t done. Emboldened, he takes a few steps forward until he’s right in Ben’s face. “I lost my brother in the Hosnian apocalypse,” he says. Rey can feel his hatred boiling.

 

“I am sorry,” Ben says.

 

“Is that all you have to say? That you’re sorry?” People are starting to take notice of what’s going on. A small crowd is gathering. “You’re fucking  _ sorry? _ Look around! Every one of these people lost someone to the First Order. How many did you kill? With your own hands, how many? Did you keep count? I bet you did. I bet you made little notches on your belt, or scratched tallies into a wall. Did you have a competition with the other jackbooted thugs? Who could kill the most rebels?” He is working himself up into a lather. Ben just stands there, accepting the verbal assault. His passivity seems only to enrage Patrok further. “You’re not going to deny it? Because you can’t. You can’t deny it. You murdered dozens of Jedi trainees. You murdered your own father. And you have the nerve to stand here in front of all these people and say you’re all better now?” He was shouting in Ben’s face by now. “I don’t care if you’re all better. I don’t care if you saved an entire ship’s worth of babies or if you’re the best fuck on the planet,” he says, casting a glance at Rey. “You can go to hell,” he snarls, then hauls off and punches him.

 

Ben staggers backwards but keeps his feet; Rey grabs his arm to steady him. He makes no move to respond. Patrok lunges forward again and Rey starts to intercept him, but then he is suddenly frozen in place. She looks around and there is Luke, hand out. He approaches and stands between Patrok and Ben, then releases him. “What’s going on?” he says, calmly.

 

Patrok splutters. “He’s...I can’t. If you have to ask, I can’t explain.”

 

“You need not explain. Your feelings are normal and justified.”

 

He seems surprised by this. “They are?”

 

“Yes. You think I do not feel anger? Shame? Grief? I feel all those things. But those feelings are not his responsibility,” he says, nodding at Ben, whose lip is bleeding. “His anguish is just as real. You need not forgive him. It would benefit you to do so, but no one can demand it of you. But you are not his designated punisher, and exacting revenge is not your job. Nor is dictating how others feel about him,” he says, glancing at Rey. “All must find their own peace, in their own way.”

 

Patrok nods, looking a little embarrassed. “I...should not have struck him. I apologize.” He says this last to Ben.

 

Ben shakes his head. “I don’t require an apology.”

 

Patrok and his friends start off. “One moment,” Luke says. They turn back. “You realize, don’t you, that he could have stopped you from hitting him, easily.” Patrok takes this in, looks at Ben, then Luke again...and then turns and walks away.

 

Rey, a bit frozen to the spot throughout all of this, goes to Ben’s side. “Are you all right?”

 

“It’s nothing,” he says, touching the trickle of blood at his lip. 

 

“I didn’t really mean your lip.”

 

He meets her eyes. “It was bound to happen. I’m almost relieved.” He looks at Luke. “I am a disruptive element here. I should move to the civilian settlement.”

 

“No. Your recovery must continue. And it is still so soon. Give it time.” He nods, then turns and departs.

 

She puts her arm around his back. “Well, I still like you.”

 

He smiles, the melancholy lifting from his brow a little. “Then that’s all I need.”

 

**Day 56, cont’d**

 

They spar in one of the training rooms. Normally they’d spar with lightsabers in the yard, but that would likely draw a crowd quickly, especially since word has gotten around about their personal involvement. Neither of them is up for being gawked at, so they stay indoors.

 

He is fierce today. Rey needs all her quick-footedness and agility to fight him, and even then, she is wildly outmatched. She reminds herself that her two years of Jedi training cannot compare to his lifetime of it, and that it isn’t a poor reflection on her to lose to him. Which she does, five times running.

 

He grasps her hand to pull her up off the floor for the fifth time. “You’re really very good,” he says, tossing his saber from hand to hand. “And every time we fight, you are better.”

 

“I still keep losing.”

 

“I’m good, too. And I’ve been doing this a long time.”

 

“Were you Luke’s best student?”

 

“Yes.” He says it plainly, without any boast to his tone. It is simply a fact. “If I hadn’t been, I might…” He sighs. “It made me a target.”

 

“It’s why Snoke chose you.”

 

“Yes. He also found it pleasing to take the son of heroes of the resistance, nephew of the last Jedi, and turn him. It appealed to his sense of poetry.”

 

“Snoke had a sense of poetry?”

 

“When it came to the Dark Side, yes.” 

 

“One more go?” she says.

 

He nods and ignites his saber. “Begin.”

 

They dance around each other. Rey has been practicing her Force-assisted acrobatics and she surprises him with a leap right over his head, turning in midair. He barely turns in time to counter her saber. He’s thrown off guard a little by the near-miss and she takes advantage, pressing forward with quick blows until she gets her saber right under his chin. He meets her eyes over the glowing blade. “Yield,” she says, grinning.

 

He is staring at her, the corner of his mouth twitching, and his gaze has gone...heavy. At the same moment, they both toss their sabers down and are on each other, grabbing and clutching, their mouths crashing and fusing, over and over. Rey is heady with victory, high on her own power and on his, pulsing in sync with him as the air seems to crackle around them.

 

She pushes him backwards, stumbling, until his back hits the wall. She flips them around so she is against the wall instead. His hands are on her ass, pulling her tight against him. She tears at his robes and her own, then turns her back to him. “Here, now,” she hisses.

 

She feels him hesitate. “You...you want…”

 

“I want you, right here,” she says, unclasping her belt and pushing her trousers and underclothes down. He is right up against her again; she can feel his hands clumsy at his own clothing, but within a few seconds she is arching her back for him; he bends his knees, hands on her hips. He nudges forward, she adjusts the angle, and then he is inside her. She moans and bangs her forehead against the wall. His breath is warm on the back of her neck; she flails back with one hand and grabs his naked hip as they begin to move together. He is so tall that this position forces him to half-squat, it can’t be comfortable. After a few moments, his hands slide over the tops of her legs, hook around the insides of her thighs and her feet leave the ground as he lifts and spreads her, pressing her into the wall. “Yes, better,” she says, gasping. The change in angle hits something inside her that makes her see stars. He is holding her up entirely, and the shift in control goes right to her head.

 

“Rey, oh gods,” he groans into her ear. “You are...I can’t…” His ability to speak seems to leave him. She grins and rocks her hips against him, pulling more groans out of his throat. 

 

“Ben,” she whispers. “Harder, I need it harder.” He complies. “Touch me.” One of his hands leaves her thigh and slides between her legs, rubbing her in time with his thrusts. 

 

She goes off like a booster engine, pounding her fists against the wall, her feet kicking. He yanks her hips tighter against him, thrusts twice, holds and cries out his own climax, wrapping one arm around her chest from behind and curling around her back like he’s trying to fuse them together.

 

They slide down the wall and collapse in a tangle of half-clothed limbs amidst a pile of training mats. Rey’s vision has sparkles floating in and out of it, and her ears are buzzing like she’s shorted out her eardrums. She twines her hand in Ben’s disheveled tunic just for something to grab on to. He pulls her to his side and turns his face into her hair, his heavy breath stirring the strands that have escaped from her buns. 

 

For a few moments, neither of them says anything.

 

She reaches out and links her fingers through his. “I kind of wish we’d locked the door.”

 

He makes a little amused snorting noise, then another, and then he is laughing, full-throated and from his belly. Rey stares. She has never seen him laugh. He laughs and laughs, his face reddening, his mouth stretched wide in a broad grin. She can’t help but laugh with him.


	9. Day 114

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the time jump between this chapter and the last (which was Day 56).
> 
> Also I am posting two chapters today because this one's so short. 
> 
> Comments are love!

**Day 114**

 

“Are you coming to breakfast?”

 

“No, I have a meeting with the council.” He isn’t looking at her. He’s at his desk with notes and pads spread out before him, reading. “I’m woefully underprepared.”

 

“I’ll bring you back something.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

She is hunting in her bag. “Where’s my damn...oh, here it is. I have to run back to my quarters, I forgot socks.” She sighs, scratching her temple, then stops and looks at him. “This is ridiculous.”

 

“Hmm?” he says, distracted.

 

“This. I’m here most nights. My stuff is spread all over creation. This isn’t working.”

 

“What isn’t?” He’s still only half-paying attention.

 

She goes to his side and puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her. “This whole...separate quarters thing.”

 

He blinks. “You want to request shared quarters?”

 

His expression makes her suddenly doubtful. She looks away, fidgeting. “Okay, maybe that’s a bad idea. It’s kind of fast, I know... I didn’t mean…”

 

He grabs her hands. He looks like she’s just presented him with a giant birthday cake and a brand-new speeder bike. “I would love that.”

 

“You would?” she says, smiling.

 

“I would have asked you ages ago but I didn’t want to...I thought you’d...you know.”

 

“Yeah.” She takes a breath. “We’d be...living together.”

 

“Yes. Is that what you want?”

 

“I don’t know, is that what you want?”

 

“Can we not go through all that again?” he says, gentle exasperation on his face.

 

She reaches out and smooths his hair back from his face. “I’ll put in the request today.”

 

He stands up and pulls her into a hug, lifting her off the ground. “I can’t wait.”

 

She kisses him. “It’ll be nice. To come home to you.”

 

“I’m...touched. That you want to do that.”

 

“We’ve been together for awhile, Ben. Are you still not convinced that I like you?”

 

He shrugs. “Thick ice takes longer to thaw.”

 

“You know that I’ll have to go to your mother for the request. Wouldn’t you rather do it?”

 

He shrugs. “You can do it.”

 

“If you say so.” She squeezes his hand and kisses him again. “I gotta go. I’ll see you soon.” He nods. She pauses at the door and looks back to find him watching her, smiling.

 

The last few months have been a whirlwind. It seems like yesterday that she brought a potted plant to his quarters and ended up staying overnight. A lot has changed.

 

The staff on base are all accustomed to seeing them together now. They spar freely outdoors, drawing crowds for their increasingly-athletic lightsaber training sessions. They spend time with Poe and Finn; Ben and Poe have been carving out a new friendship between themselves, and Rey can tell that Poe is glad for it. Ben has made a few friends among the intelligence corps, and he’s even started having family dinners with his mother and uncle. She has been included in these evenings, although it’s strange for her to interact with Luke outside of training. They have gone on several missions together; the synchronicity they achieved the first time they fought together, here on base during the air strike, has never faded. They are an unstoppable force when they fight side by side, and for that, they have earned the respect and admiration of most of the pilots and soldiers. She can see the weight lifting from him, the darkness receding, and she is relieved.

 

Out of that cell, further and further away from Before (as she tends to think of it), Rey has gotten to know more about Ben Solo as his original personality reasserts itself. He is funny, snarky in a way that reminds her of his father, but he is also passionate. He is tender, but is inclined towards gruffness. He resorts to strict Jedi-like formality when he is unsure of himself. He shares freely, but needs to be drawn out to do so. He wants to know everything about her, to the point that it sometimes drives her a bit batty, and he remembers the name of every single person he meets.

 

He is haunted, and always will be. He still sometimes wakes from nightmares, burrowing into her arms like a frightened child. He still cries on occasion when they do the spirit forms, and sometimes she catches him looking at her with fear in his eyes, like he’s afraid all this will evaporate, or that the darkness will come and reclaim him. But when she has her own nightmares, he is there to hold her and whisper sweet reassurances in her ear, and she’s never really known what it is to feel safe before this. They make each other safe, and it binds them together ever closer.

 

She decides to get it over with and goes to General Organa’s office before heading to breakfast. She knocks, and the General looks up. “Rey, come in,” she says, waving her in. “This is a surprise.”

 

“Yes. Something’s...come up. I have to make a request, and I thought it’d be better to just bring it right to you.”

 

Leia looks intrigued. “What is it?”

 

Rey steels herself. “Ben and I would like to request shared quarters.”

 

Leia’s eyebrows arch slightly. “Really? He didn’t mention that you were talking about that.”

 

“Well, we weren’t. I brought it up this morning, and...I know it’s a bit fast.”

 

She shrugs. “Fast is in the eye of the beholder. You and Ben seem quite...established. It’s a logical step.”

 

“I’m glad you think so.”

 

Leia smirks. “Did you think I’d put up some kind of objection to you moving in with my son?”

 

She fidgets a bit. “The thought crossed my mind.”

 

Leia stands and comes around her desk to grasp Rey’s hand. “Rey...surely you know how fond I am of you. And you saved him. I will always be in your debt for that. I couldn’t be happier that you have become his...partner.”

 

Rey blinks a bit at the word. Is that what she is? His partner? “That’s good to hear.”

 

Leia squeezes her hand. “I’ll have the request processed immediately. You two can move tomorrow.”

 

“Thank you.” On impulse, Rey hugs her. Leia’s arms come around her at once, and Rey lets herself relax into it, indulging in the fantasy of having a loving mother.

 

**Day 115**

 

The move doesn’t take long. Neither of them have a great many personal belongings. Rey has some clothing, some weapons and books, a coffee mug Finn gave her and her toothbrush. Ben has his own clothes, weapons and books, and the potted plant she’d brought him. He has been very attentive to it, watering it and trimming it, and it has at least doubled in size since he’d acquired it. The plant is the last item brought to their new quarters. He carries it ceremoniously, Finn and Poe following along and humming the Republic anthem. Rey can’t stop grinning as he holds it reverently before him as he walks into their new living room, looks around, and then with great deliberation and ceremony he places it in the center of the coffee table. Finn and Poe finish up the anthem with simulated drums and gongs, and Ben sweeps her into a deep, swoony kiss. “Now it’s our place,” he says, rubbing his nose against hers.

 

She nods. “Our place.” She has only just gotten used to having her own space, period, that isn’t a hollowed-out ruin. It’s pretty mind-blowing to now be standing in quarters she’ll be sharing with someone else, a man who’s become her lover, her...partner.

 

“Okay, then,” Finn says. “We’ll just be off, then.”

 

“You don’t have to go!” Rey says.

 

“Oh, I think we should,” Poe says. “You probably want to...break things in,” he says, winking at her. She rolls her eyes. “But we should have a housewarming party.”

 

“A party?” Ben says, making a face. “Would anyone come?”

 

“Sure!” Poe says. “You’re just going to have to get used to the fact that some people around here like you, Ben.”

 

He grunts. “Do they all have to come over, though?”

 

“Leave it to us,” Finn says, grabbing Poe’s elbow and dragging him out. “You guys...have a good night. See you tomorrow.” And they are gone.

 

Ben turns to her and put his hands around her waist, bending to rest his forehead against hers. “So. Alone at last.”

 

She grins, her hands sliding up his chest to link around his neck. “You sound like a man with a plan.”

 

He is still for a moment, then abruptly lifts her up and carries her into their bedroom. She giggles when he tosses her onto the bed and looms over her. “This is the plan,” he says, pitching his already-low voice even lower, sending shivers up her back.

 

“We better make sure this bed...works,” she says, laughing at herself.

 

He settles over her and kisses her, deep and passionate. She winds herself around his long body and kisses back, gasping as his mouth moves down her neck. She is very sensitive there, and he knows and exploits it. He props up on one elbow and looks down at her, and Rey has to remind herself to breathe when she sees his expression. “I love you,” he whispers.

 

Rey goes still. He has never said that before, nor has she.

 

Nor can she say it now.

 

She reaches out and touches his mind, looking for an expectation that his sentiment be returned. Thankfully, she doesn’t find it, just an openness and a relief that he was able to express himself. She smiles up at him, pulls him down to her and kisses him, hoping she can show him what she can’t quite put into words.

 


	10. Day 179

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE that I posted two chapters today, so if you're getting to this one directly from a link or something, don't read it before you read chapter 9.
> 
> Also, again, note the time jump between this chapter and the previous one (Day 114).

**Day 179**

 

“Darling, I’m trying to fly the ship. Stay in your seat.”

 

“It’s boring in my seat.” He is half-draped around the pilot’s chair, his hand on her abdomen, kissing her neck. Rey giggles and squirms. She really doesn’t have that much to do, the ship is on autopilot and will be for another hour, at least. She just enjoys messing with him.

 

“Hrrn...argh...oh, all right,” she says, grabs him and yanks him down across her lap. He is amusingly overlarge for this position -- happily, the arms of her chair take most of his weight or else she’d be crushed.

 

He grins and links his arms around her shoulders. “That’s better.”

 

Rey grabs his chin and kisses him hard, wiping the grin off his face. Her free hand goes right to his crotch; she feels him harden almost at once. “Yes. Much better,” she growls against his lips.

 

“Wow,” he gasps, between rough kisses. “This just went from joking and flirty to dead serious in a hyperspace jump.”

 

“You ought to know by now not to jokey-flirt with me unless you’re prepared to back it up,” she says. kissing the skin beneath his ear, where she knows he’s sensitive. 

 

They are on their way to Coruscant, where Ben will be evaluating Force-sensitive children and teenagers to determine who is to be trained at the new academy Luke is organizing. Luke is doing the same on another planet. While her own Force sensitivity is strong, to evaluate its strength in others takes a much longer and deeper familiarity than she has yet achieved, so it’s up to Ben to conduct the evaluations, although he usually lets her try it a few times. 

 

This is not their first time doing this. She wishes there were another way. It’s hard on Ben to be evaluating students to take the places of the ones who are gone. He does not complain - he probably considers it only appropriate penance - but she can tell.

 

When they land, they are welcomed with great pomp and ceremony by the Chancellor and several senators. It’s easy to forget, living in their bubble on D’Qar, training and working and living their normal lives, but she and Ben are two-thirds of all the Jedi in existence, and the rest of the Republic views them with something like awe, even if a good portion of them are still suspicious of Ben. 

 

They get into a transport and are taken to the living quarters. The Chancellor walks with them to the uppermost floor, where only the most distinguished guests are housed. “Jedi Solo,” he says, motioning to one door, “And Jedi Rey,” he says, motioning to the door across the hall. She and Ben exchange an amused glance. “What? Is there a problem?” the Chancellor asks.

 

“No, no problem,” she says, hurriedly.

 

Ben bows slightly. “Chancellor, Jedi Rey is my partner in life, as well in our studies of the Jedi arts. We typically share quarters.”

 

The Chancellor’s face goes slack with embarrassment. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t aware that you were...you are…?”

 

“Yes, we are,” Ben says.

 

“Of course. Please, both of you take these quarters,” he says, motioning to the ones he’d previously offered to Ben. “I’m sure they will be spacious enough for two.”

 

“Thank you,” Ben says.

 

“Best of luck with the evaluations. Will you join us this evening for the reception?”

 

“We will be glad to.”

 

The Chancellor and his various hangers-on bow and depart. Rey follows Ben into their quarters and they set down their bags. Ben looks amused. “You were going to just take your separate quarters and be content rather than embarrass anyone by correcting them, weren’t you?” he says.

 

“Well, we could have gone along with it and then I’d just stay over here anyway.”

 

“True. But I don’t like hiding anything from anybody.”

 

She stands on tiptoes to kiss him. “I know.”

 

**Day 180**

 

When they arrive at the space that used to be occupied by the Jedi Council, now vacant but maintained, there are a large number of people gathered. “I thought you said around forty,” she murmurs to him.

 

“That’s what I was told. I suspect the rest are...just curious.”

 

She feels every eye on them as they walk past the crowds of people. She hears whispers, lowered voices, and the words “Kylo Ren” more than once. She can sense Ben focusing on remaining serene. He is more successful at it than she is; she feels the weight of their gazes not just on him, but on her. He’s the one who used to be evil, she thinks, but I’m the woman who sleeps with the guy who used to be evil. 

 

The envoys who were tasked with locating the potential students are in the main chamber. There are chairs and tools laid out for them, and a group of young Force-sensitives ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers. “Master Solo,” the envoy says, bowing.

 

Ben bows back. “I am not a Jedi Master, merely a Knight,” he says. “Please, just call me Ben. We have but one Master. This is Jedi Rey,” he says, motioning to her. The envoy bows again, which she returns. “She will be assisting me with the evaluations.”

 

He sits down. Rey stands at his shoulder, casting her attention outwards. 

 

“Bring the first.”

 

**Day 180, cont’d.**

 

The evaluations take a long time.

 

Each candidate is brought before Ben. He must focus all his attention on each one, searching their minds, their feelings, seeking out their connection to the Force, testing its strength, depth and resiliency. He gives them simple tests, reflexes, perceptions, but most of the evaluation is mind-to-mind. The candidates look at him with awe, even fear, but he is unfailingly kind and gentle with them, and their anxiety soon abates as they see in him no trace of the boogeyman that Kylo Ren once was.  After each examination is complete, Ben makes notes on the list of names. She can see that of the first ten, he has approved only two, one a five-year-old girl with striking purple eyes, and the other a preteen Mandalorian who hadn’t spoken a word to him.

 

They take a break, and she leads Ben into a side chamber that’s been set aside for their private use. She can sense his fatigue, and his need for a few minutes’ peace in his mind. He sits down, weary, and buries his face in her stomach. She holds him close and combs her fingers through his hair. They don’t speak.

 

The evaluations resume. Rey is lulled into inattention by the repetition of the words, the tasks, the silent communion between Ben and the candidates. 

 

It happens early in the afternoon.

 

A twinge in the Force snaps her into sharp focus. She glances at Ben; he is keyed in on the candidate before him, he hasn’t felt it. She casts her mind out over the onlookers, searching for the twinge that had alerted her to danger. 

 

Time slows to a crawl. She zeroes in on one man in the crowd a split second before he raises his blaster and fires at Ben. Her saber is in her hand before she realizes she’s reached for it. She steps forward and swings it, deflecting the blaster fire, then reaches out and snatches the blaster from the man’s hand from across the room.

 

Suddenly, blaster fire comes from three different directions, all over the chamber. Rey spins, knowing she cannot possibly deflect them all. Her heart leaps up into her throat.  _ Ben! _ it cries out. 

 

But then she realizes that Ben is in no danger, nor is she. All three blaster bolts are hovering motionless in midair, crackling. Ben is on his feet, his hands raised at his waist. He flicks them and all three bolts implode, fizzing out of existence. He reaches out and makes a beckoning gesture with both hands, and four frozen figures float forward, their eyes bugging out. Rey is still turning in a circle, her saber raised. “Rey,” he says, quietly. She holsters her saber, the blaster hanging from her hand like the carcass of an animal she hadn’t meant to kill.

 

Security guards are rushing in. Ben holds up a hand. “It’s all right,” he says. He walks forward and stands before the four men who’d tried to assassinate him. He looks them each in the eye. “You’d risk injuring innocent people, even children, in order to satisfy your anger toward me?” He speaks quietly, but firmly. They don’t move. They can’t. He waves his hand and their immobilization lifts.

 

“This is for the Hosnian system,” one of them growls. He tries to fire again, but of course the blaster is now inoperative. “No!” he cries. Tears run down his cheeks.

 

Ben steps close and cocks his head. “You lost your family. You were supposed to be with them but you were called off-world.”

 

“Get out of my head, murderer!” the man snarls.

 

Ben disengages at once, backing up with his hands raised. “I’m sorry.”

 

Security is cuffing the men and dragging them away. They are still shouting, about the Hosnian system and revenge and traitors and the Dark Side and genocide. Rey goes to Ben’s side and takes his hand. “Are you all right?”

 

He puts a hand over his forehead. “Just...let me be for awhile.” He turns and walks away. 

 

She watches him go until he vanishes around a corner, then wheels on the security guards. “Nice job with security!” she shouts. “How many people in here have a weapon? He could have been killed! One of three living Jedi, and he might have died on your watch!”

 

“Our deepest apologies, my lady,” says the chief of the detail. “We did not think anyone would dare try to harm a Jedi.”

 

“You can’t possibly be that stupid. Didn’t it occur to you that he might have enemies? You know his history!”  The chief’s face is red, and he seems at a loss for words. Rey reins herself back in. “I’m sorry, Chief. I should have verified your procedures before we even landed. I just...I cannot let anything happen to him.” She shuts her eyes for a moment, reaching for her center. “We’ll continue the evaluations tomorrow. Please clear everyone out. And install weapon scanners for tomorrow’s sessions.”

 

“Yes, my lady,” he says, hurrying off to do her bidding.

 

Rey returns to their ship to contact Luke. “I was afraid something like this might happen,” he says, via holotransmission.

 

“You might have warned  _ us,  _ then,” she chides him.

 

“Do not resume the evaluations. I will come to Coruscant myself and complete them.”

 

“We’re already here, we might as well do the job.”

 

“No. You and Ben have been working nonstop for weeks. You need a break.” He hesitates. “You’ve never gone on holiday together, have you?”

 

“Um...no. Not really. Just working trips, like this one.”

 

“All right. I’m sending you some coordinates. Leave in the morning, and take a week there. Rest and don’t think about anything.”

 

She sighs. “That sounds lovely. If I can get Ben to agree to it.”

 

“Remind him that working himself into an early grave is not the best way to atone for past misdeeds.”

 

“I will.”

 

“How is he? After this incident this afternoon?”

 

“I’m not really sure. He seemed...unbalanced.”

 

“That’s understandable.” Luke nods, as if he’s made a decision. “Yes. A break is what you need. Take care of him, Rey.”

 

“I always do, don’t I?” She signs off, irritated, and returns to their quarters. When she enters, Ben is standing near the window, looking out, hands clasped behind his back. He turns and sees her, and then he is striding towards her with intent. He sweeps her off her feet and into a tight embrace, kissing her wildly. “Ben!” she says, when she can get words in around his lips. “What...what’s your...what are you…”

 

“My protector,” he purrs against the skin of her throat. “My guardian. You should have seen yourself leap into action.” His hands are on her ass now, beneath her robes.

 

She grins. “Oh, did that work for you?”

 

“Very much.”

 

She shrugs off her robe and hops back down to the ground, grabbing his hand. “Show me how much, Jedi,” she growls, pulling him back toward the bedroom.

 

Once she has him there, though, she reconsiders. “Wait,” she says, pulling back from his kisses. “Wait a minute.”

 

“What?”

 

She looks up into his face. Stars and gods, he is beautiful, she thinks. “What happened in there...Ben, I know you.”

 

He nods, his arms linked about her waist. “Better than anyone.”

 

“Don’t use sex as a distraction. Let’s...talk about it, or something.”

 

“I don’t wish to talk about it. I’ve been in here thinking about it. I don’t need any more  _ processing _ ,” he says, using one of Luke’s favorite words. “There are people in the galaxy who want me dead. There will always be people in the galaxy who want me dead.” He meets her eyes. “Right now I’d like to remember that there are some who don’t.”

 

She’s done. She wraps her arms around his neck and holds him, feeling his arms close around her at once.

 

**Day 188**

 

They are quiet in the ship, returning to D’Qar after their week’s holiday. Rey feels more at peace in herself than she has in a long time. The autopilot is flying, they have hours before they come out of hyperspace, so they are sitting in the back, each engaged in their own pursuits. Rey is reading, Ben is reviewing Luke’s reports from the remainder of the Coruscant evaluations. 

 

They are sitting in the same chair. Rey is curled into his side, her head resting on his shoulder and her legs draped across his lap. His arm is slung casually over her knees, and every so often he tilts his head and rubs his cheek against her hair, sometimes turning to press a kiss there. She just sits, accepting the gestures, letting the peace sink further into her soul.

 

They have just spent what she can only describe as an idyllic week at a large retreat on a lake. When they’d arrived at the coordinates Luke had sent, they’d been effusively greeted by the hosts and the staff as friends of “Mister Luke.” They’d both spent the first hour of their stay just goggling at the place. They’d been placed in a private cabin overlooking a waterfall, and the staff had waited on them hand and foot. She’d found it uncomfortable at first, being...served. She’d taken care of herself all her life, and even on base she was still largely self-sufficient. Ben seemed less discomfited, but then she remembered that he’d grown up the child of two very famous people.

 

She wasn’t used to...leisure. The first day, she had been restless and out of sorts, itching for something to do. Ben had watched, bemused, as she’d paced and fidgeted like a caged animal. The idea that nothing was expected of her and she had nothing she had to study, practice or perform was so foreign as to feel surreal. She’d spent most of that day hiking in the woods behind their cabin, returning sweaty and dirty with leaves in her hair. 

 

The second day, she had woken up feeling lighter. She really had...nothing to do, and that was amazing, in its way. They had swum in the lake, gone for walks, napped in the insanely comfortable bed, read holos, and gone to the main house to listen to a Nubian quartet in the evening. Was this what it meant, to relax? Such an odd concept. Even meditation had a purpose, and an objective to achieve. Here, the only purpose was for there to be no purpose. 

 

She’d watched the weight of responsibility slide off Ben’s shoulders, and felt it leave hers as well. Here, there was no talk of atonement, of rebuilding, or their role in the future of the Republic. They didn’t wear Jedi robes, they didn’t do their forms, and their lightsabers stayed packed away in their bags.

 

She shifts in the chair and lets her eyes slide shut, her book falling closed. Just a little more relaxation before they have to go back to their regular lives. Her mind’s eye replays scenes from their holiday, the beauty of the setting, the delicious food, the soothing music...and the long hours she’d spent with Ben.

 

She hadn’t known it was possible to have that much sex. Freed from the daily stresses of their lives, her desire for him, and his for her, had gone into overdrive. The privacy of their lodging had inspired creativity. Outdoors, indoors, in the lake, in the woods, in bed, on the patio, in the bath...anywhere, and everywhere. They’d had athletic, boisterous sex, gentle and tender sex, rough and shocking sex, and everything in between. She could hardly remember now that Ben had been totally inexperienced when he’d first slept with her. He had been a dedicated student in this as he was in all other things. His body was becoming her most sacred space, and their joining her holiest rite.

 

Their last morning there, she had woken to find herself alone and had padded out of bed to go in search of him. She had come upon him sitting in the grass and watching the sun come up. He hadn’t seen her at first, which had given her a rare opportunity to observe him in private, and her stomach dropped to her shoes as it hit her hard that she loved him. Utterly, and completely. He had been careful using those words with her, ever since that first time he had said them, probably so as not to pressure her into a declaration before she was ready.

 

She’d almost run to him and confessed it right then, but he had turned and caught sight of her. Smiling, he had beckoned her forward and she had sat with him, wrapped in his arms, and they’d watched the colorful sunrise together.

 

She just has to find the right moment. It can’t be casual. She has to make sure it’s perfect.

 

Now, she just wants to enjoy these last few moments of peace with him before they get back to D’Qar and have to go back to training, working, fighting, reassembling the tatters of the Republic and sticking it together with creeper vines and tack-putty. She lets herself go limp, thinking she’ll just doze off with his heartbeat in her ear. She feels him set down the pad with the reports on it, and then his arms come gently around her, settling her more comfortably against him. She burrows in a little closer and feels sleep gaining ground.

 

She is almost all the way under when she hears Ben speak. He probably thinks she is asleep. “You’ll never know how deeply I love you,” he whispers, barely audible. Rey carefully keeps her breathing steady and doesn’t betray that she’d heard him. Within a few moments, she actually is asleep.


	11. Day 188

**Day 188, cont’d.**

 

She wakes up in the wreckage, dazed. She sits up, feeling her way through her body. A bolt of pain rockets through her head and she sways a little. “Dammit,” she hisses. Her hand comes away from her forehead bloody.

 

She looks around, trying to assimilate what’s happened. Their ship is cracked open like an egg, the bulkheads shorn in two, sunlight streaming into the interior. There is blood all over the other half of the console, where Ben had been sitting -- his chair is a twisted wreck, smashed up against the bulkhead, but he isn’t there. She gasps in alarm. “Ben?” No answer, and there’s no sign of him. “Ben!”

 

She gets up, stretching out with the Force, searching for him. Panic crowds her consciousness; she is not yet alert enough to achieve the focus she needs to use the Force effectively. She stumbles out of the wreckage and falls into the tall grasses of whatever meadow she is in.

 

They’d been pulled out of hyperspace on their way back to D’Qar, probably by a tractor beam. The jolt had blown their short-range engines and they’d crashed on this planet, whatever this planet was. She remembers flashes of the chaotic descent, of warning lights flashing, of alarms blaring, and of Ben grabbing her hand as they hurtled toward the surface. 

 

“Ben!” she screams, looking around. She cannot sense him. But she has eyes...eyes that are now seeing the tracks through the grass, the trampled areas, and some blood on the ground. 

 

Someone took him. Probably whoever had pulled them out of warp and crashed them on this planet. She takes off at a run/stumble along the path of trampled meadowgrass. She has no idea how long she’s been unconscious. 

 

She doesn’t get very far before she realizes she has to get herself together if she’s to help him. Her lightsaber is still in the ship. She plops down in the grass, folds her legs and settles into a meditative pose. She takes long, deep breaths, feeling her own injuries - thankfully, minor - and pushes away the pain. She feels her jittery mind quieting and her body flowing with the Force. She reaches out and summons her lightsaber; it flies from the wreckage and slaps into her palm. She gets to her feet and takes off, faster than a human can run, assisted by the Force.

 

She sees them a few clicks away when she reaches the top of a rise: a squad of stormtroopers and an ominous figure in black. She wonders if it is another of the Knights of Ren. There have been rumors that those who survived the war have regrouped and continue to wreak havoc on a smaller scale. For them to recapture Ben would be a tremendous coup. They appear to be carrying him on a litter. Her heart wrenches again - how badly is he hurt? Is he unconscious? She can barely sense him, even at this near distance.

 

She swoops down the hill and is on them before they can react, lightsaber flashing. The litter crashes to the ground, spilling Ben into the grass. He doesn’t move. Rey slashes mindlessly at the stormtroopers, forcing herself not to think of Finn behind one of those helmets, thinking only of saving Ben and getting them the hell off this planet, in the Knight’s ship, if necessary.

 

“Hold your fire,” says a commanding voice. A female voice. The stormtroopers back off and look at the Knight. She is tall and imposing, clad in all-black robes and a mask, reminiscent of what Kylo had worn. Rey faces her, standing between her and Ben, her lightsaber held at the ready. “So, this is the Jedi girl,” the Knight says.

 

Rey sighs. “Don’t you villainous types get tired of underestimating people and then paying for that misjudgment with your lives?”

 

“I wouldn’t underestimate you, Rey. Oh yes, I know your name. He used to speak of you often,” she says, nodding toward Ben. “Mostly about how he’d crush your spirit and bring you to the Dark, and then with you at his side he’d be unstoppable. He was always like that. Delusions of grandeur.”

 

“I suppose you’re more practical.”

 

“Oh, always.” She ignites a long deep purple lightsaber. “I am Trylor Ren. I was his lieutenant. And I’ve come to take him home.”

 

“His home is with me.”

 

She chuckles. “Oh, so that’s how it is, is it? You envision a loving home with him? A happy future? Dream on, little girl. He is too far gone. He can never belong to you, or what you fight for.”

 

“He already does. He is mine, and I am his.” She raises the lightsaber again. “And you  _ will not have him. _ ”

 

Trylor Ren sighs. “Very well, then. If you must.” She charges, but Rey is ready. She has seen it, and she counters. And then it is on.

 

Rey is shocked to find that despite her braggadocio, Trylor is not very good at lightsaber fighting. Rey guesses that she’s only been practicing with inferior opponents, and thus hasn’t honed her skills. She is sloppy and amateurish, and yet overconfident. Rey finds that it is easy to anticipate and counter her moves. Her confidence soars and she presses forward, driving Trylor back. She wonders what she ought to do with her if she is victorious. Kill her? She can’t do that. But can she keep this entire squadron of stormtroopers subdued enough to save Ben? He is badly injured. She needs help, that much is certain. But for the moment, she needs to defeat this Knight.

 

She surges forward, her saber flashing fast. Trylor is slow and clumsy by comparison, and suddenly Rey spins her saber and flips Trylor’s out of her hands. She kicks at her chest and sends her backwards over a knoll, onto her back. She stands over her, one foot on her chest, and holds her saber at her neck. “Yield,” she says.

 

“Finish it,” Trylor hisses. “If you can.”

 

“I won’t do that. But you will yield to me,” she says, waving her hand. “And offer no further resistance.”

 

“I will yield, and offer no further resistance.”

 

Rey nods and steps back. “You will assist me in bringing Ben Solo to your ship, and let me leave with him.”

 

Before Trylor can reply, they both feel a harsh ripple in the Force coming from Ben. Rey’s head whips around. He is on his side, groaning, blood coming from his mouth. She holsters her saber and races to him, skidding to her knees. She pulls his head and shoulders into her lap. “Ben!” she cries. “Ben, hang on...we’re going to get you to the ship and get you out of here.”

 

He splutters a bit and writhes on her lap. “Rey...get back to D’Qar.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere, not without you,” she says. She is weeping, and she hates it but cannot stop it.

 

“This is...what I was meant for.”

 

“A meaningless death on some unnamed planet? No, you are not meant for this, do you hear me? You are meant to be a great Jedi, and to help train the next generation of Jedi, and you are meant to be at my side until we die of old age,” she sobs.

 

He lifts one hand and touches her face. “My love,” he whispers. “You are so much stronger than me.”

 

She grasps his hand and presses it to her lips. She can see...can  _ feel _ ...him fading away. She can sense his broken bones, his bleeding organs, crushed in the crash. “Ben, no...stay with me, you have to hang on.” 

 

He smiles at her. His mouth opens and closes. Blood bubbles to his lips and runs down his mouth, dripping onto her pants. He seems to want to speak, but can’t.

 

Rey feels herself shredding. She cannot lose him. She simply can’t. “No, Ben!” she cries. “You stay with me, dammit! Don’t you dare die!” She leans down and presses her forehead to his. “I love you, please, don’t leave me, I love you so much.” She glimpses the shadow of tomorrow’s regret that she has not told him this before this moment. She’d wanted it to be so perfect, and now this is all she has left.

 

She feels him smile and squeeze her hand...and then he goes limp, his head sagging to one side. She senses the life leave his body, and it seems to leave hers at the same time. The stormtroopers are standing around them, watching with those impassive faces, and Trylor Ren is still sitting in the grass, awaiting instructions, rudderless after Rey’s mind influence had been abruptly withdrawn.

 

Rey clutches Ben to her chest and a wail of anguish rips from the bottom of her soul. On its heels comes the most invigorating sensation -- a pure, white-hot bolt of rage and pain, and it is sweet and smooth and oh so seductive.

 

Some part of hears another ship landing. She hears voices, and blaster bolts. Most of her hears nothing but the rush of hate and fury slamming into her brain. She feels a surge of power like she’s been plugged into a coupling and wonders if her body can even contain it.

 

It is the Dark Side. She knows it is. It steals into her body, clinging to the tails of her despair and her grief, it fills the hollow spaces inside her with the promise of revenge, of retribution, of power beyond the telling, power to punish those who had taken him from her, power to ensure that no one would ever hurt her like this, ever again.

 

Someone, somewhere is calling her name. She does not hear them save in a tiny, banished corner of her mind where the Light still burns brightly, quickly losing its power in the rush of darkness that overtakes her.

 

She lifts her head and meets the eyes of Trylor Ren. She sees there pure terror, and it is like sweet balm to her. She grips Ben’s body tightly to her chest, throws her head back and shrieks, and she feels it burst from her in all directions, stabs of blue lightning leaping from her, and it is exhilarating. For the second time, she is incandescent, she is transcendental. She is pure Force, pure darkness, pure rage, and she is more powerful than she could have imagined possible.

  
Her last thought before she loses consciousness is that she understands. At last, she understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, before y'all murder me, please remind yourselves of the warnings that are on this fic - and the warnings that are NOT on this fic.


	12. Day 195

**Day 195**

 

She doesn’t wake up so much as she is pulled up, like she is underwater and a hand reaches down to grasp her and draw her up to the surface. She breaks through and sucks in a hard breath, her body feeling insensate and rubbery with disuse. She knows she has been out a long time, just not how long.

 

Luke is leaning over her, his hand on her forehead. It’s his hand that has pulled her up, pulled her out. She smiles. “Luke,” she breathes.

 

“Rey,” he says. “Can you see? Can you feel your body?”

 

“I can see. I think...yes, I can feel everything.”

 

He sighs. “Good. That’s good. We’ve been trying to wake you for days.”

 

“Days? How long has it been?”

 

He looks at someone on the other side of the bed. It’s Leia. Finn is sitting next to her. “It’s been a week, honey,” Leia says, leaning forward to grasp her hand.

 

“A week? Oh, gods and stars,” she says, struggling to sit up. Luke helps her, pulling a pillow behind her back and raising the head of the bed. She’s about to say thanks, to smile, to ask for water, when...all of it rushes back. The crash, her duel with Trylor Ren, and…

 

Luke sees the life drain from her face. “Rey...what you did, I know why. I understand how.”

 

“What I did?” she says, her voice quivering. 

 

“We’re going to talk about it later. For now you just need to recover. Your body’s had a bad shock. You’re not used to that much power going through it, that’s...not something you can ever be prepared for.”

 

“What? What?” she says, helpless to say anything else.

 

Luke leans closer. “You’re going to need rest, and a lot of meditation. I think I might…”

 

“Stop! Just stop!” she cries. “How can you...what are you talking about? How are you talking about me meditating when Ben is dead?” She feels tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I loved him and he is  _ gone, _ your nephew...your  _ son,”  _ she barks at Leia.

 

Leia and Luke exchanged a horrified look.  “Oh my God, we...of course. She wouldn’t.” Leia leans forward and puts her hand on Rey’s shoulder. “Rey, I’m so sorry. We didn’t think.”

 

“You didn’t  _ think? _ ”

 

“Ben isn’t dead.”

 

Everything comes to a halt inside her head, like a line of soldiers in formation when the one in the lead stops short and a pileup results. “Wha...what?”

 

“He’s fine. He isn’t dead. I feel terrible, we should have led with that,” she says, shooting daggers at Luke with her eyes. “You’ve been asleep so long, we didn’t remember right away that you didn’t know that.”

 

“He’s...he’s okay?” Rey can hardly let herself believe it. “But...I felt him, he died right there…”

 

“No. He lost consciousness. He  _ nearly _ died. It was a close call. The ship we sent to retrieve you when you didn’t come out of warp landed just after...well. You were both brought back. A few days in a bacta tank and Ben is good as new. He’d be here, but we made him go get something to eat.” Leia smiles and leans a little closer. “He’s barely left your side for a moment, my dear. I’m sure he can sense that you’re awake, he’s probably running here as fast as he…” Leia’s words are cut off by the door opening. Ben is standing there, breathing hard, his face and eyes wild.

 

A strange choked noise, half-sob and half-laugh, bursts out of Rey’s throat at the sight of him. She had thought, until that moment, that Luke and Leia might just be trying to cushion the blow, but here he is, alive and whole. He breaks into a wide smile and lets out a huge breath. She just holds out her arms and he rushes over, sits on the edge of the bed and sweeps her up. She burrows into his chest and her fingers clutch in his tunic, grasping at the fabric and the skin underneath. “Rey,” he murmurs. “Thank the stars.”

 

Rey doesn’t have the fortitude to put up a brave face just now. She dissolves into sobs against his chest. “Ben,” she manages.

 

“Shh, shh,” he soothes her, his face pressed into her hair. “It’s over.”

 

She leans back and grabs his face to kiss him, hard. He kisses back, then pulls her back into his arms. She shudders and exhales a long, shaky breath as her body begins to relax. “You’re really fine?” she asks, muffled against his tunic. “You’re not just pretending?”

 

She feels him smile. “I’m really fine. It’s you we’re worried about now.”

 

“Oh, I’m…” She stops.

 

Ben feels her go still and pulls back, looking down into her face. “You’re what?”

 

Her eyes widen as more memories come back to her. “What did I do?” she whispers.

 

**Day 196**

 

They think she is asleep, but she can hear them. They are in the corridor, but the door to her room is open.

 

“Please, just let me take her home,” Ben is saying.

 

“Nobody knows the effect of so much dark energy flowing through her when she was unprepared, and emotionally compromised,” Luke says. “The fact that she stayed unconscious for a week despite all attempts to rouse her is a sign in itself.”

 

“Has Poe been discharged?”

 

“Yes. He wants to see her, but I’m worried that her guilt will send her into a spiral.”

 

“She’s strong, Luke.”

 

“She shouldn't be wasting energy trying to be strong right now.” She can hear the weariness in Luke’s voice. “Eighteen stormtroopers and one of the Knights of Ren, wiped out in a single burst. That is power unlike anything even I have ever seen. The Dark Side came to her quickly, and made her a force like nothing we have ever known.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me about the power of the Dark Side.” There is bitterness in Ben’s voice.

 

“You never involuntarily struck out in blind rage and grief and obliterated everything in your path.”

 

“Oh, you don’t think so?” He sighs. “I just want to take her home.”

 

“She needs rest.”

 

“She can rest at home.”

 

“She needs…”

 

“To be away from me?” Ben’s voice is sharp.

 

“She needs to be away from emotional stressors. Her feelings for you are what brought all this about. She needs to remain calm and centered. Perhaps for a long time.”

 

“I won’t leave her. I won’t let her go through this alone. There’s no one in this galaxy who can understand this better than I can.” There is a pause. “I love her. I will look after her. I know what she’s feeling. I’ve been living it every since the end of the Rebellion.”

 

Luke is quiet for a moment. “All right. You can take her home after the doctor’s seen her this afternoon.”

 

She hears Luke walk away, and then Ben enters. He sits in his chair next to her bed and takes her hand, lifting it to press his lips to her knuckles before resting it on the mattress at her side. “How are you feeling?” he says.

 

“I don’t know.” She looks into his eyes. “How many did I kill?”

 

He doesn’t look away. “Eighteen stormtroopers, and Trylor Ren.”

 

“None of ours?”

 

“No. You seemed to instinctively target the First Order forces for the worst of it.”

 

“But...some of ours…”

 

“Were hurt, yes. A few were thrown to the ground. Several were knocked out. A few suffered burns.”

 

“And...Poe?” she can feel her lip quivering.

 

“He was the closest to you. He was trying to run to you so he was...in the line of fire, so to speak. He was out for a few days, but he’s all right.”

 

“He is? Really? You’re telling me the truth?”

 

“Yes. He’s really fine.”

 

“Does he hate me?”

 

Ben leans closer. “ _ No. _ He doesn’t hate you at all. He knows the pain you were feeling, and that you couldn’t help it.”

 

“Why couldn’t I help it? It was the Dark Side, Ben. It came to me, it came so fast.”

 

He nods. “I know,” he says, quietly. 

 

“It was like...having cold fire poured into my veins. I felt like I could leave my body, do anything, be anything. It was power beyond...I never imagined it would be like that.”

 

He is squeezing her hand. “Believe me, I know.”

 

She feels like her heart is a cold, lead ball inside her chest. She looks at him, and all she can see is that lightning bursting from her body. “I thought you were dead. And I just wanted to  _ hurt _ people.”

 

He leans over her and puts his hand on her forehead. “Rey, none of this is your fault.”

 

“Whose fault is it, then?”

 

“Ours, mine and Luke’s. We didn’t adequately prepare you for this.”

 

“How were you supposed to prepare me for that? For watching you die in my arms after being ambushed by cowards? You shouldn’t  _ have _ to prepare me for that, I should have prepared  _ myself _ for whatever could happen, and don’t infantilize me by taking it all onto yourself.”

 

He nods. “All right. Even if it is your fault, you can come back from it. You move on from it and you learn.”

 

She is just so tired. “Take me home?” she says, quietly.

 

“After the doctor sees you.”

 

“No, Ben. Now. Take me home now. Please?”

 

He glances out the door, his jaw working. He turns back and looks at her, then nods. He stands up, leans over and scoops her right off the bed, hoisting her high in his arms. She curls into him, shaky and dizzy. He walks out the door. Nurses and doctors gape at them as they pass, but he must have the “don’t mess with me” look on his face because no one says a word as he carries her out of the medbay.

 

**Day 200**

 

She walks back and forth in their quarters, testing her limbs. Everything seems to be working. For the first few days after she’d woken up, it was like the Force lightning she had unwittingly produced had thrown all her body’s own electrical systems into chaos. All the signals were crossed, nothing worked like it was supposed to. Now, her body has sorted itself out, and she’s starting to feel functional, if not normal.

 

Normal. She remembers normal. She’s not sure she’ll ever really feel normal, ever again.

 

The door chime sounds. She jumps, startled - she isn’t expecting anyone, nor does she really want to see anyone. She goes to the door and opens it.

 

Poe is standing there. He is smiling, but it is a hesitant, unsure smile. He doesn’t know what kind of reception he will face. “Hey,” he says.

 

Rey can’t smile back. She can’t quite manage it. “Hi.”

 

“Can I…?” he nods past her.

 

“Uh...sure. Yeah.” She stands aside and he enters. “Ben’s not here.”

 

“I know he’s not. I came to see  _ you. _ Can’t I come see my friend?”

 

She wraps her arms around her midsection, miserable. “How can you still be my friend?”

 

Poe is across the room in two strides and has his arms around her, so tight. “You will always be my friend. It wasn’t your fault.”

 

She hugs him back, hard. “It was, it was my fault.”

 

“You thought he was dead. You...it was too much.” He pulls back and looks in her eyes. “Rey, I know you. You’d never hurt me, or anyone else. But you’re only human, and you’re not fully cooked as a Jedi yet. It was too much,” he repeats. “Nobody blames you, except yourself.”

 

She looks into his kind, forgiving eyes, and she is grateful for that forgiveness. She wishes she could tell him the truth, the truth she hasn’t yet let outside herself, but she can’t. So she just hugs him again, and lets herself take comfort in it.

 

**Day 201**

 

The dark depths of the night are the worst times.

 

She hears the echoes, she feels the surges. She lies awake waiting for it to happen again, waiting to feel that slide of power up her back. Ben is curled around her, protective. They have not made love since she woke - she hasn’t felt well enough. They just sleep together, his much-larger body shielding her even when he’s not conscious.

 

She gently extracts herself from his arms and tiptoes to the window. They are lucky - they have a partial view of the lake. She watches the stars and the water, bright in the light reflected off the four moons. She hears him stir and rise, but she doesn’t turn. His hands fall on her shoulders and she leans back against his broad chest, her head fitting under his chin.

 

They don’t speak.

 

After a while, Ben shifts closer and wraps his arms around her from behind. She hangs on to his forearms where they cross her chest. He ducks his head and she feels his lips against her bare shoulder.

 

“You know what I have to do, don’t you?” she says, quietly.

 

He sighs. “Yes.”

 

She turns around in his arms. “Did you hear me? What I said to you, just...before?”

 

“I heard you.”

 

“I meant it. I love you more than anything in the galaxy, more than I can ever tell you. I didn’t know I had this much inside me, I didn’t know it was possible to love someone like this.” He tries to keep his face from crumpling and doesn’t entirely succeed, and Rey’s heart aches.  “Do you believe me?”

 

He nods. “I believe you.”

 

“And that’s why we can’t be together, not now.”

 

“I know.” He is hanging on to her for dear life, his eyes misting over.

 

She puts her hands on his chest and lowers her head. “It was...I’ve never felt anything like that. It was the Dark. I didn’t know it would feel like that. I didn’t know it would be so powerful.”

 

“You don’t have to try and explain, I know how it feels.”

 

“I’m so scared, Ben.”

 

He puts a finger under her chin and tilts her head up so he can look in her eyes. “But you haven’t told anyone what you’re scared of, have you?” Tears spring to her eyes and she shakes her head, unable to speak. “You’re not scared of being taken over by the Dark. You’re scared because you  _ want _ to be.”

 

Her fingers dig into the skin of his chest but he doesn’t flinch. “Yes,” she chokes out.

 

He pulls her close and envelops her in his arms. “I know. I remember.”

 

“I want to feel that again. I want it so badly. I want to give myself over to it and let it just take over, to feel that power and that freedom, and I can’t ever let that happen. You never said it felt like that. You never told me how it was.”

 

“The Light is just as powerful, but it’s not as easy. It makes demands on you, it asks for hard work before it gives up its secrets. The Dark is quick and seductive. It wants you to take the easier path. But in the end it is hollow, and without peace, or love, or fulfillment.”

 

She sighs and burrows closer. Ben bows his head down to hers, his breath stirring her hair. “I’ve spoken to Chewie,” she says. “He’s going to fly me to the Temple on Ahch-To.”

 

He is still for a moment. “When?”

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

She feels him wanting to object, to ask her to wait a few days, or a week, but he says nothing. “All right.” His voice is careful, measured, but she hears the pain behind it.

 

She tips her head back to meet his eyes. “It isn’t forever. I need to go, and be alone, and complete my training. I need to be secure inside my head, and find my balance.”

 

“Will you…” He trails off, his throat working and tears standing in his eyes. “Will you come back?”

 

She hears his unspoken _"to me"_ at the end of that question. “Yes. Someday. I don’t know when. We are not done, Ben Solo. Don’t go thinking you’re a free man now, because it will never be over between us, you hear me?”

 

He manages a weak smile. “Okay.”

 

“I don’t want to go.”

 

“I know you have to. Luke will be pleased.”

 

“Oh, hang Luke, this is about us.”

 

“No, this is about you. It needs to be about you.”

 

“I just...I’m terrified of myself, of what I might do, or become. It was like a drug, Ben. One hit and I just want more, and I can’t walk that path.” She sighs. “My love for you drove me to the Dark. I have to learn to maintain my balance no matter what happens. I can’t become what you fought your way back from.”

 

“You won’t. You’re not like me. You see it clearly for what it is.”

 

“You escaped.”

 

“It took fifteen years and killing my own father,” he says, his eyes blazing. “I won’t let that happen to you. I will do whatever I have to do to keep you from that fate, even if it means losing you.” He lowers his eyes. “If loving me hurt you, and left you vulnerable, then maybe it would be better…”

 

“No,” she says, urgently, gripping his upper arms. “No, I don’t accept that, and neither does Luke. I can’t flip a switch and stop loving you. That’s not how it works. I can’t cut myself off from my emotions. I will go, and I will come back stronger. You still have some healing to do yourself. While I am gone, keep working. Think of me, and know that when I return, we will be stronger together.”

 

He presses his forehead to hers. This gesture has become theirs, since the very beginning, their way of saying  _ we are connected, we are each other’s, we are one _ . “And I will be here waiting. I will wait for you as long as it takes, I don’t care how long. Months, years, I will wait for you. Because there can’t be anyone else for me, Rey. Ever.”

 

Her tenuous control shatters. She flings her arms around his neck and clutches him hard to her. He wraps his arms around her waist and hauls her up a little, her feet leaving the ground. Her mouth finds his and she kisses him almost violently, pouring herself into it, her mind screaming at her,  _ last chance, last chance. _ He kisses back, setting her down and cupping her face in his hands.

 

Rey reaches up and slips off her nightshirt, leaving herself bare in the moonlight. He is already bare-chested; she grabs at the waistband of his loose pants and yanks them down. He lifts her up and puts her on her back on the bed. 

 

What transpires over the next few hours is what she will take with her when she goes. She must take it all, all of him she can hold inside herself, to sustain her over the months or even years of her self-imposed exile. She must remember how he worships her with his mouth and hands, and imprint the sense of his skin into her own flesh. She must keep in her heart how he looks at her, and how she feels when she looks at him, hoping that it shines out her eyes well enough for him to know its truth.

 

She must remember how it feels to be joined with him, hearing the sounds that come from him and from herself, feeling the pulse of life in his body and the rise of her own blood as they move together.

 

For a long time, she was his Light, but now he must be hers.

 

**Day 202**

 

Chewie is loading her boxes of supplies, books and training manuals onto the ship while she bids goodbye to her friends. Leia is first. She hugs her tightly, no words required. Luke nods at her before he embraces her. “Peace, and balance,” he says into her ear. “You will be one with the Force.”

 

Finn is openly weeping, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. “I don’t understand why you have to go,” he says. He has not taken the news of her departure well. “Can’t you seek balance here?”

 

“No,” she says, taking his hands. “I need isolation. It’s not forever.”

 

“It’s going to  _ seem _ like forever,” he grumps. She chuckles and hugs him, hard. She will miss him desperately, and Poe as well, who hugs her with a little less mania than Finn had.

 

“Take care of each other,” she tells them as she pulls back. Poe nods, reaching out for Finn’s hand.

 

Ben is standing a bit apart from the others, near the Falcon’s open ramp. Her whole body aches as she goes to stand before him. What can she say to this man, who has gone from being her most hated enemy to someone she loves down to her cells? She says nothing, because there is nothing to say.

 

He lifts her hands and clasps them in both of his, holding them between their chests. He leans his forehead against hers and she lets her eyes fall closed, soaking up as much of his energy as she can. She lifts their hands and presses her lips to his knuckles, then rests her cheek against them. 

 

She raises her head and meets his eyes. “Come get me when it’s time,” she murmurs. “You’ll know when.”

 

He nods. “I will.”

 

“Bring rings when you do. I want it to be my husband who brings me back.”

 

He nods again, his eyes welling up. “Yes.”

 

She lifts one hand and strokes his face. His chin is trembling. She raises up and kisses him, a light and gentle kiss, lingering and sweet. He drops her hands, a quiet groan in his throat, and pulls her into a bone-crushing embrace. She grips him tight, willing herself to keep it together.

 

“Remember who you are,” he whispers in her ear. “And remember how much I love you.”

 

She nods against his shoulder. It is physically painful to pull away from him. She steps back, avoiding his eyes, until she must drop his hands. She clenches her fists and goes to the Falcon’s ramp, where Chewie is waiting.

 

“Rey?” She turns. He is smiling at her, his face wet. “May the Force be with you.”

 

She smiles back, but says nothing. Chewie puts his arm around her shoulders and they walk into the ship. The ramp closes. Numb, she follows Chewie into the cockpit. He starts up the ship’s engines. She watches out the ports as her found family stands on the launchpad, watching. Finn and Poe lift their hands in a wave. Ben has moved to stand next to his mother, who is holding his hand. Rey puts her hand on the glass and keeps watching them as the ship lifts off. Just before Chewie turns them skyward, she sees Ben fall to his knees and his head and shoulders slump forward. Leia kneels to embrace him, and then the ship rotates to face the heavens and she can’t see them anymore.

 

She waits until Chewie has plotted their course and they are in hyperdrive before she retreats to the back, finds a corner, curls up in it and sobs.


	13. Day 1

 

**Day 1**

 

He wanders around the base like a ghost. Nobody bothers him. They all know that Rey is gone, that she’ll be gone for a long time. Rumors fly about what had happened after their crash. It is more or less known that Rey somehow killed the entire contingent of enemies they’d faced, and some of their own had been injured. Depending on who you ask, she’s either been exiled for having gone all Sith Lord, or she’s on some remote Jedi rehabilitation colony. Nobody wants to talk about it too extensively. 

 

He goes to their quarters. They feel empty and desolate. Her clothes, her things, her essence, is still here, but she is not.

He leaves, and keeps wandering.

 

**Day 2**

 

He sleeps on the couch in his mother’s quarters. She says nothing, just brings him coffee in the morning. 

 

Luke appears and wordlessly leads him to the training ground. He takes him through a punishing series of drills, exercises and forms. Ben is grateful for every sweating, grueling moment.

 

**Day 3**

 

He watches the Falcon land from across the base, knowing that it has but one occupant now.

 

He has a briefing, then a meeting with the intelligence officers, practice with Luke, and a check-up with the doctor. His ribs are still sore from their crash.

 

He eats meals like an automaton. He stands in the shower motionless, distracted by memories of the last time she surprised him by joining him in here, naked and giggling. 

 

He sleeps on his mother’s couch again. His own quarters feel like a haunted house.

 

**Day 4**

 

He puts in for temporary relocation to single quarters, on the other side of the residential quadrant, where he used to live.  He takes only what he needs. He notes that their shared quarters are designated “Not In Use,” instead of “Vacant.” No one will take up residence there. They can stay as they are...until.

 

**Day 5**

 

He has put this off for days.

 

No, he has put this off for  _ months. _

 

He stands at the door, uncertain and not a little bit terrified. He musters his gumption and rings the buzzer.

 

The door opens, and for a long moment, he and Chewie stand there in silence, staring at each other.

 

The door is shut in his face.

 

He leaves, thinking he deserves no less.

 

**Day 6**

 

He goes again to Chewie’s quarters. He rings the buzzer. The door is not opened, but he knows that Chewie is in there.

 

**Day 9**

 

Chewie finally opens the door again on the fifth day. He somehow manages to look resigned, furious and disappointed all at once. He stands aside and lets Ben enter.

 

Ben rakes a hand through his hair. Chewie stands there by the door after he’s closed it. He roars quietly.

 

Ben shrugs. “I should have come months ago.” Chewie flaps a hand and walks past him, a muttered growl coming from him. “There  _ is _ something to say. Chewie…”

 

An angry roar; Chewie’s head whips around.

 

Ben puts up his hands. “I’m sorry. Chewbacca. It’s just...I’ve apologized to everyone else. I don’t know what…”

 

Chewie cuts him off. He holds up a long-range transmitter and hands it to him with a few grudging growls.

 

Ben examines it. “So she’ll signal every week? Just a check-in?” Chewie nods. “Good. That’s...thanks for arranging that. At least we’ll know she’s all right.”

 

Chewie turns his back and picks up some bit of weaponry he’d been tinkering with. One whole wall of his quarters is a workbench. The entire room is a mess, full of equipment and machinery and weapons, a melange of junk that had been fascinating to a young boy who’d been forbidden to touch any of it.

 

Ben wonders if he’s dismissed. He cautiously approaches. Chewie gives him a glance, but doesn’t speak. “Can I...help you with that?” Chewie grunts and hands him a photon collider. Ben turns it over in his hands. “Looks like the collonating inverter’s blown. Rebuilding that will be a pain.”

 

Chewie just shrugs, and sits down on a stool. He picks up another part, something from the Falcon’s hyperdrive, probably. Ben, still holding the collider, sits on the other stool. He sets down the collider and shrugs off his cloak. Chewie hands him a tool, and he gets to work.

 

**Day 14**

 

Luke finds him in the repair bay, covered in grease with half his upper body inside the speeder he and Chewie are rebuilding. “Ben?”

 

He pops his head out. “Oh...I’m supposed to be doing something, aren’t I?”

 

“Well, the students are arriving tomorrow, and…”

 

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I got carried away. Give me a minute.” He picks up his cloak and goes to the washbasin to de-greaseify himself as best he can. He waves to Chewie on his way out, getting a nod and a growl in return.

 

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Chewie,” Luke comments as they leave.

 

“Yeah. I’ve...neglected him.”

 

“You were focused on Rey.”

 

“Well, first I was in a box, but then...yes. I was.”

 

“Is that the only reason?”

 

“No. I was afraid to face him.”

 

“He’s the one who shot you.”

 

Ben snorts. “I deserved it. And we both know he could have killed me. Should have.”

 

They are quiet for a moment as they walk to the training campus, where tomorrow, the first shipload of students for the new Jedi school will be arriving and given housing. “Did you get the signal today?” Luke asks.

 

He nods. “Yes. She’s fine.”

 

“Can you sense her?”

 

Ben hesitates. “No. Can you?”

 

“No. I think that’s her intent.”

 

He sighs. The empty ache in his heart at her absence is something he’s growing accustomed to, quite against his will. “I miss her,” he says.

 

“So do I.”

 

**Day 47**

 

Ben is restless. Sleep is an elusive prey tonight, even though he’s exhausted.

 

He is more or less perpetually exhausted these days. The twenty-four students who have come to study are endless bundles of energy, and there is only himself and Luke to corral them. Their youth and vigor make him feel every minute of his thirty-two years. He can’t imagine how Luke must feel, he’s pushing sixty. On top of his duties helping to train them, he still has responsibilities to the Republic as an intelligence consultant, and he can’t neglect Chewie, not again.

 

On top of that, Finn and Poe seem determined to adopt him into their circle of friends, as some sort of unseen gesture to Rey. Without her as a connecting thread, it was awkward at first, but after enough card games and bar-hopping evenings and games of dom-jot in the yard, that feeling has faded. He can never bring himself to refuse them, so he drags himself to whatever activity they have taken it into their heads to invite him to. He sees in their actions the urging of his wife (for he has already begun to think of Rey as his wife, in his own head), he can hear her telling them to be nice to Ben, he’ll be lonely, don’t let him brood, take him out, make sure he has fun. So fun he will have, even if he’s in real danger of collapsing from exhaustion.

 

And yet, he can’t sleep.

 

He has what Poe calls “twirly brain,” wherein his mind can’t shut off and stop circling around a few thoughts. Most of his were about Rey. What was she doing? Was she eating enough? Was she safe? Did she miss him? Was she making progress? When would she return? 

 

He also can’t deny that a big part of his insomnia is simple frustration. Of the physical kind. Having lived like a monk for his entire adult life, suppressing his libido, the heady freedom of having a loving, enthusiastic partner had shattered all his coping mechanisms like they were made of glass instead of fifteen years’ hard practice. It was the same for her. Luke liked to wax rhapsodic about their emotional and spiritual connection, and he wasn’t wrong, but they were also two young, fit people who were completely hot for each other. Their physical connection was just as potent, sometimes more so. He’d gotten used to having sex with Rey regularly, nightly for the most part, and over a month of abstinence was starting to get to him.

 

What he was trying hard not to think about was the free pass he’d gotten from his intended. The morning she had departed, Rey had sat him down and had initiated what was, to him, a very surprising discussion.

 

“I don’t expect you to stay celibate while I'm gone,” she’d said, without preamble.

 

His eyes had widened. “What?”

 

“You heard me.”

 

“I don’t...I heard, but...what do you mean?”

 

“I mean I might be gone a long time. I’m confident in your commitment to me, and your feelings for me. So I’m saying if having me gone starts driving you nuts, it’s okay if you find...someone to help you out with that.”

 

He’d laughed nervously. “Rey, I’m not going to sleep with someone else just because I miss the sex.”

 

“Why not? I’m just being practical, here.”

 

“You’re serious?”

 

“Of course I’m serious.”

 

“Don’t you think that’d be a little unfair to this hypothetical other person?”

 

“Not if you’re up-front with her...or him...about what it is. You think there aren’t people on this base who’d be happy to have casual sex with you with no expectation for more? Believe me, they’d be lining up outside your door.”

 

“Okay, I’m just going to put that bizarre statement aside and focus on the fact that you’re giving me permission to cheat on you.”

 

She shrugged. “I don’t consider it cheating. It would just be...addressing a need. It’s a real, legitimate need. It’s too much for me to ask you to just go without for however long I’m gone, when I’m the one imposing it on you.”

 

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t be able to do the same. You have needs, too. It isn’t fair.”

 

“No, and it also isn’t fair that I’m leaving for who knows how long and you have to stay here. Nothing’s ever fair, Ben. I hate leaving you. If there’s a way it can suck a little less for you, then I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t take it.”

 

“No reason? How about that I only  _ want _ to have sex with you? I don’t want to sleep with some random person. You’re the one I want.”

 

“I know that. But I won’t be available for awhile. It’s easy to refuse now. You may feel differently the more time goes by. I’m telling you that I don’t want you to abstain just for my sake. It’s just...scratching an itch.”

 

He had ended the discussion shortly thereafter, thinking that he’d never consider such a thing, but as she was so often, Rey was right. The more time that’s gone by, the more his mind turns back to that conversation. He still doesn’t think he can possibly just walk up to somebody and suggest a no-strings-attached evening together, and he doesn’t envision that ever changing, but it certainly makes living inside his own head a little more interesting.

 

In the meantime, he’ll just have to keep...taking care of his own business. And it’s still Rey he imagines when he does. He wonders if she does the same, where she is, alone in the ruins of the Jedi temple. Sometimes he thinks of her there, in a drafty stone hut on a crude pallet, eating meager rations and doing nothing but studying, training and meditating, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from getting in the Falcon and going to get her, whether she’s ready or not.

 

**Day 62**

 

“Master Luke?”

 

“Yes, what is it, Yarleigh?”

 

“Where’s Master Rey?”

 

Pause. “You remember Master Rey?”

 

“Yeah! She was with Master Ben when he came to test us!”

 

“Yes, she was.” Pause. “Master Rey has gone on a long trip. She has to study and become a stronger Jedi.”

 

“Oh. Will she be back?”

 

“Yes, she will. But we don’t know when. That’s up to her.”

 

“Me, too.” Pause. “Master Ben is sad when he thinks about her.”

 

“You can sense that?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“Master Ben misses her, too.”

 

“He misses her more, I think. Are they...boyfriend and girlfriend?”

 

“Yes, they are.” Luke’s smile comes through in his voice.

 

“Does he love her?”

 

Sigh. “Yes, young one. He loves her very much.”

 

“Oh. That’s sad for him. I hope she comes back soon.”

 

“So do I.”

 

Little Yarleigh, their youngest student and one of the best, scampers out of Luke’s office. Ben slips into a shadow so she doesn’t see him eavesdropping.

 

“Ben, I know you’re out there.”

 

He sighs and goes into the office. “Cheater.”

 

Luke meets his eyes. “That young girl will be a force to be reckoned with one day.”

 

“She already is.” Ben starts to leave.

 

“Wait.”

 

He turns back. “What?”

 

Luke sighs, fixing him with a thoughtful look. “Do you need some time off?”

 

“No! Gods, no.”

 

“I just thought maybe...some time away from here. Where there’s so much to remind you…”

 

“Of Rey? I don’t need these surroundings to remind me of her. I don’t need to be reminded when she’s all I think about.”

 

“She can’t be, Ben. You have other responsibilities.”

 

“Are you suggesting that I’m neglecting those other responsibilities?”

 

“No. You’ve been completely dedicated to the training and the Republic.”

 

“Then kindly refrain from trying to regulate what’s in my head while I do those things.”

 

“Well..that’s fair.”

 

Ben sags against the wall. “I know she said it could be a long time, but…”

 

“You secretly thought it would just be a few days. A week, at most.”

 

He nods. “Yeah.” He looks at Luke. “I’m not the only one who’s sad lately.”

 

Luke busies himself with some paperwork. “Sadness and happiness are one in the Force, they balance and…”

 

“Come on, Luke.”

 

He sighs. “I’ve been missing Han lately.”

 

Ben looks away. “So have I.” He meets Luke’s eyes and they have that same conversation they always have, wordless and futile.  _ I’m sorry/it wasn’t you/I wish I could take it back/we have to move on/I’ll never forgive myself/he forgave you/I don’t deserve forgiveness/that forgiveness isn’t all about you. _

 

He nods and turns to leave. “Ben?” He pauses and looks back. “She will come back.”

 

“I know.”

 

**Day 78**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 95**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 116**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 151**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 156**

 

He is sprawled on the couch in Finn and Poe’s quarters. Poe is cooking something. Finn is playing holotaire. Just a normal evening.

 

But it isn’t. There is tension in the air that he can sense, even though his friends are being aggressively nonchalant and casual. They want to talk to him about something, and they’re dreading it.

 

Poe brings over dinner. Ben sits up and Finn pauses his holotaire game to fetch drinks. Ben accepts his beer. “Cheers, mate.” Finn nods. “So. When are you guys gonna tell me what you’re nervous about telling me?”

 

They stop and exchange a glance. “Fucking Jedi,” Poe mutters.

 

“It doesn’t take a Jedi to read you guys,” Ben says. “You’re not subtle.”

 

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Poe says, folding his hands. “Me and Finn...we’d like to get married.”

 

Ben grins. “That’s fantastic!” The reason for their nervousness suddenly hits him. “Oh, but...you wanted to wait for Rey, but now…”

 

They look at each other. “It’s been so long, Ben,” Finn says, quietly. “We want to wait for her, but…”

 

Ben shakes his head. “Don’t wait. She’ll understand.”

 

He sees them both lift. “Really? You think she will?” Poe says.

 

“Absolutely. She’ll be sad she missed it, but she wouldn’t want you to put everything on hold for her. We don’t know when she’ll be back. So just do it.”

 

“But...we also want her there.”

 

Ben sighs. “Well, guys, I can’t help you. I don’t know when she’s coming back. If you want to wait, then wait. If you want to go ahead, then do that. But do what’ll make you happy. Rey wouldn’t want you to base your decision on her.”

 

Finn and Poe look at each other for a long moment. “Okay. We’re going to wait for a little while longer. But we won’t wait just for her.”

 

Ben nods. “Okay. Fair enough. And guys...I’m really happy for you.”

 

“I hope that doesn’t make you...feel bad,” Poe says, his face falling.

 

“No. It’s okay. I’ll have the rest of my life to be married to Rey, I can wait however long she needs.”

 

They both grin and link hands, scooting a little closer, and give each other looks that are just for them, and Ben smiles and smiles and hopes that they can’t tell that he is breaking in two.

 

**Day 170**

 

Leia and Luke are talking about something, he isn’t paying attention. He’s picking at his dinner, having flashbacks to family meals when he was a child. They are pretending not to notice his distraction.

 

People have stopped asking him when Rey is coming back. He’s getting pitying looks from base personnel. He puts on a normal face, but he can’t deny that it’s wearing on him. 

 

Conversation flags. Leia glances at him, and pats his arm. “Hang in there, champ,” she says, using her old nickname for him.

 

He nods. “I’m sorry I’m...not much fun these days.”

 

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Luke says. “We’re enough fun for everyone,” he goes on, winking at Leia. She rolls her eyes.

 

“I’ve been thinking so much about when she comes home, that we’ll pick up where we left off, but...what if we can’t? What if she’s so changed by her sabbatical that she won’t want to be with me?” The words tumble out, his deepest fear finally given voice.

 

Leia shakes her head. “I’m sure that won’t be the case.”

 

“None of us can know that. She could become someone entirely different. Maybe she’ll decide she needs to live by the ancient Jedi code, with no attachments. Maybe she’ll decide the only way she can keep herself from the Dark Side is to sever all her emotional ties. What if I go to get her and she tells me she doesn’t love me anymore?”

 

They exchange a worried glance, and in an instant, Ben realizes that they’ve already had this conversation between themselves. “Ben…” Luke begins.

 

“You already think that might happen, don’t you?”

 

“I don’t know. I don’t know where her meditations will lead her. The Force must guide her to her destiny, as it guides us all.”

 

“And if it leads her away from me, that’s just my bad luck.”

 

Luke looks miserable. “Yes.”

 

He sighs. “I don’t care about myself. I care about her, that she gets what she needs. If what she needs is to never speak to me again, then I won’t argue.”

 

Leia still has her hand on his arm. “I’m sure that’s not what she wants.”

 

“What we want isn’t always what we need, Mother.”

 

**Day 203**

 

“Try it now!” Ben says. Chewie, sitting in the cockpit of the ancient speeder, cranks the starter. It turns over and wheezes, then flops. “Dammit!” Ben grumbles. Chewie roars. “Yeah, I’ll tighten the actuating wheels again.” He ducks back into the cursed machine’s guts, grease smearing over his bare chest (he’d ruined too many shirts on this project already).

 

He and Chewie had been rebuilding the broken-down Old Rebellion speeder for what felt like forever. They’d started it not long after Rey’s departure, shortly after Ben had finally gotten up the stones to go talk to his godfather. They’d still never really talked, not about anything real. Chewie had never spoken of Han’s death at Ben’s hand, or his recovery, or his relationship with Rey, or Chewie’s own grief, not just for Han but for the boy who used to watch the pair of them working on the Falcon. They just worked on the speeder, mostly in silence, speaking about the work or about inconsequential happenings around the base.

 

“Okay, try it again,” he says, popping back up.

 

Chewie cranks the starter. The speeder splutters, catches...and then the engine roars to life. The heavy, clanking thing rises off the floor and hovers, ready for action. Chewie pumps his hands in the air and brays his rough Wookiee laughter. Ben thrusts one fist skyward. “Hell yeah!” he crows. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

 

Chewie powers it down before disaster strikes and hops out. He comes over and claps Ben on the shoulder, growling.

 

“Yeah, I never thought it would run again, either. Persistence, right?” He grins up at him, and then they both look over toward the workbench. For a moment he’s not sure why they did, but then it hits him...they had both looked to Han’s workbench, where he’d normally be standing. This realization lands on both of them at the same time. Ben lifts up the hydrospanner he’s been using - it has the initials H.S. inscribed on the handle. He stares at it, a lump rising in his throat.

 

Chewie is looking at it, too. Ben tilts his head back and looks into Chewie’s blue eyes, and sees there understanding, and grief, but no anger.

 

It rises in him like a black, tarry plague, and just as unstoppable. His chest hitches and the spanner falls from his hands. His knees suddenly won’t hold him. Chewie catches him as he crumples, going down to floor with him, and then Ben is being held against the furry chest he used to cuddle as a child, wanting another story, another piggy-back ride, another lullabye. He grabs at the long, soft hair and releases the poison that still lingers, down at the bottom where it’s hard and calcified and still so potent. Chewie holds him while he cries, and he should have known that this was where the monsters had no power.

 

**Day 240**

 

Later, he’d realize that some part of him had been waiting for it.

 

Major Kreimdall asks him to stay after the meeting to discuss force-depletion projections for the proposed cleanout of First Order forces on Atarux IV. They sit at the conference table in the now-empty room, going over numbers and strategies. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to attempt it with less than two squadrons of fighters,” he says, tapping the pad. “Three would be best.”

 

She nods. “I agree. I’d like to send a destroyer as well.”

 

“If one can be spared. We should consider the possibility of ground action  - the Order may flee to the surface if their ships are destroyed.”

  
“I’ll run that up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes.” She puts down her pen and smiles at him. “You’ve really been invaluable to us in this, Solo.”

 

“I’m glad to help.”

 

“And with the new Jedi training...you’re keeping yourself busy.”

 

He nods. “I prefer it that way.”

 

“Not much time for yourself.” She bites her lip and flushes a little. “Listen, I...this is probably incredibly inappropriate, but...I like you. And she’s been gone a long time.”

 

He grits his teeth. “Two hundred and forty days.”

 

“I know the situation. I don’t have any illusions.” He just stares. Is this really happening? “I know you find me attractive.”

 

“It’s not a matter of my personal taste, you  _ are _ attractive.”

 

“It needn’t mean anything. Just some company. Scratching an itch, you might say.”

 

His head whips up, his eyes narrowing. “Oh. I see.”

 

“What?”

 

“She put you up to this, didn’t she?”

 

Kreimdall sits back a little. “What do you mean?”

 

“Rey. Before she left, she gave me this little talk about how I should avail myself of physical companionship if I wanted to. And she used that exact phrase - scratching an itch.”

 

She rubs the back of her neck, looking a little sheepish. “Well...she and I used to play paddleback in the rec hall. We got to be pretty friendly. I used to tease her about sharing you - I wasn’t lying when I said I like you.”

 

He sighs. “I like you, too.”

 

“She came to me the morning she left and asked me to keep an eye on you. If he starts looking too down in the mouth, she said, just...suggest it.”

 

“Rey asked you to...hit on me? Is that something women do for their friends’ lovers?”

 

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t call it a common request, no. But she knew I’d be up for it. I’m not hung up on appropriateness about these things.”

 

“Clearly not.” He is having trouble meeting her eyes. “So...you’re saying I look down in the mouth?”

 

She leans in a little. “Ben...you look miserable. I’ve been trying to catch you alone for weeks, but you’re always with Luke, or Chewie, or Finn and Poe, and I didn’t think you’d respond too well if I showed up at your quarters and threw myself at you.”

 

“So you decided to throw yourself at me in the conference room.”

 

“We’re on equal footing here. It’s neutral ground.”

 

“I appreciate the consideration.” He meets her eyes. She really is an attractive woman. Tall and red-haired, Rey’s opposite in most respects.

 

“So...the game is up, I know, but the offer still stands. We can be friends with benefits while she’s gone. You needn’t feel guilty, she’s given both of us her blessing.”

 

“I know she has. But I’m sorry, Helz. I can’t. I wouldn’t…” He rubs a hand over his face. “I just miss her. I don’t want anyone else. And I can’t imagine it’d be very much fun for you, and I even have doubts about myself.”

 

She nods. “Fair enough. Just...it’s a standing invitation. None of us know how long she’ll be gone. If it comes to it, you know where I live.” She gets up, gathers her things, and leaves with a squeeze to his shoulder.

 

Ben sits there for a moment, wondering if he’s an idiot.

 

**Day 289**

 

Finn and Poe are married in front of the entire base. His mother officiates. The party afterwards is destined to become legendary.

 

Ben slips away as early as he can. He jogs out to the hilltop he and Rey used to sit on and looks up at the stars.

 

He doesn’t come back until the sun rises.

 

**Day 316**

 

It’s cloudy today. 

 

**Day 340**

 

Chewie’s dug up another clunker to rebuild. Ben rolls up his sleeves and digs in.

 

**Day 386**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 441**

 

He has slept with Helz Kreimdall four times over the past several months. It helps, but in other ways it doesn’t help at all. She’s good company, and it does scratch the itch, but it also just reminds him even more of how Rey is not here.

 

**Day 476**

 

He struggles to remember the exact color of her eyes. He spends an hour tearing apart their old quarters, searching for a photo that shows them clearly. It is surprisingly difficult to find one. When he does, at last, he spends far too long sitting and staring at it, trying to commit the color indelibly to his memory.

 

**Day 514**

 

Helz meets someone she wants to have an actual relationship with. He is glad for her, and relieved for himself. 

 

**Day 557**

 

He has been without her so much longer than he was with her. It doesn’t seem possible.

 

**Day 632**

 

His own training is going better than Luke had anticipated. He cites Ben’s singleminded determination as the cause...what Ben knows he believes, but doesn’t say, is that Ben’s determination is a direct result of his desire to distract himself from Rey’s absence. What he might not realize is that Ben is equally determined that when Rey is ready to come home, having transformed herself, he will be worthy of her. 

 

**Day 679**

 

_ Transmission received: check. _

 

**Day 686**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 693**

 

_ Transmission received: check _

 

**Day 700**

 

Ben jerks awake, gasping, with his mind on full alert. “What the…” he mutters. He doesn’t know what woke him. Everything is still and calm.

 

Then he feels it. He feels  _ her. _

 

He sits up, his heart pounding.

 

_ Ben. It’s time. Come to me. _

 

He hears her voice, as clear as if she were in the room with him. He has not heard that voice in a very long time, but it slots neatly into the groove worn into his mind by her familiarity and his remembrances. And she is just  _ there _ , in the Force, in a way she has not been since she left. He senses her readiness, her anticipation, and her calm.

 

_ I’m coming, my love. I’m coming right now. _

 

He bolts out of bed and pulls on the first clothes his hands touch. He runs out of his chambers and across the quad to the block where his mother and uncle have their own quarters. When he turns down the hall, he nearly collides with them, coming the other way, both of them looking equally as disheveled and gobsmacked as he’s sure he does.

 

“Did you feel it?” he blurts out.

 

“Yes, we both did,” Luke says. “It’s Rey. Did she speak to you?”

 

He nods, his throat closing up. “Yes. She said it’s time, and I should come now.” He chokes back a sob as it hits him that this is really happening. She is really coming home.

  
His mother beams, and pulls him into a hug. He clings to her and tries to breathe steadily. “Then go get her,” she says. “Go get our girl.”


	14. Day 701

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On your left, you'll see this fic, descending into shameless fluff.

**Day 701**

 

He is alone in the Falcon. Chewie offered to come, but he needs to do this alone. He needs to see her first alone. And he’s pretty sure that’s what she has in mind.

 

Luke and Leia had almost had to physically restrain him from just leaping into the ship and taking off immediately. “You might end up staying a little while,” Luke had said. “Take some supplies. She must be tired of rations by now. Take some fresh food, she’ll appreciate it.” He’d relented, and taken the time to pack a few things and put on actual clothing, and not the half-clothes half-pajamas he’d run across the quad wearing.

 

Now, he has hours to Ahch-To, and all he can do is sit here and fret. So fretting is what he is doing.

 

_ What if she’s not interested anymore. What if she’s grown past me. What if she doesn’t want me anymore. What if she’s so powerful that I seem weak and impotent to her. What if she’s mad I slept with Helz, even though it was her idea. Oh stars, what if that was a test or something. What if, what if, what if. _

 

In his pocket is a small box containing the rings. He’d purchased them shortly after her departure, allowing himself one look - and one try-on - then he’d put them away in his desk and hadn’t looked at them since. 

 

He wonders if she will look different. He definitely does. His hair is longer than it had been when she’d left, and he’s grown a mustache and goatee that his mother says flatters him, but he isn’t so sure. 

 

Of course she’ll look different, he thinks. You don’t spend this long in exile on an island and not look different.

 

He drops out of warp and enters the atmosphere, his entire body a mass of tension and anxiety. The moment he leaves hyperspace, he feels her, so much stronger than he had on D’Qar.

 

_ I’m here. _

 

_ I’m waiting for you. Come to me. _

 

He lands, packs up a knapsack and his lightsaber, and sets off. He’s heard enough stories from her about the endless stairs to the temple that he is prepared. Each step brings him closer, and with each step his nervousness increases. The excitement of seeing her is making his whole body tremble. Soon he’ll hold her again, touch her again, kiss her again, hear her voice again, with his ears and not through the Force. Will she smile at him the way she used to? Will she have the same broad, giggly and girlish grin she’s always had, or will she be too somber for such things now?

 

He passes the huts near the temple, glimpsing her bed inside and her fireplace. He doesn’t wonder where she is - she is guiding him to her as surely as if she’d left him a trail of breadcrumbs.

 

He crests the hill near the temple, comes around a large rock...and there she is. Standing on the cliff, facing him, as if she has been waiting there for days, eons, even.

 

For a moment, he cannot breathe.

 

Her hair has grown very long and wild, and it streams unrestrained out from her head like a flag. Her robes whip around her body, outlining her form in the fabric, her cloak billowing behind her. There is a saber on her belt, but it is not the one she left with. It is longer and heavier, and he realizes she must have built it here.

 

Her face is exalted, it is ethereal. She glows with a light from within that he almost cannot bear to look at, she is the sun and his eyes will burn out of his skull unless he looks away.

 

She is transformed. She is infinite.

 

He has long fantasized about embracing her at this moment of reunion, of sweeping her up into his arms and kissing her until she is breathless, but now that he is here, such an action seems unthinkable. He’s not sure he dares touch her - his flesh would surely burn if he tried. He is seized by an impulse to fall on his knees before her, to prostrate himself at her feet. If she were to demand his blood sacrifice, he would gladly present his neck to her lightsaber and thank her for the privilege with his dying breath.

 

This is it, he thinks. She is beyond me. She is above all emotion, she has evolved past the need for attachments. I will be  _ her _ pupil now, my only contact with her as the grateful recipient of her wisdom.

 

She takes a few steps toward him, her windblown hair and cloak seeming to pull her back, as if they are trying to keep her away from this sad, inferior mortal man.

 

But then, the serene expression dissolves from her face and she beams a wide, girlish grin at him. She giggles a little, and it is her. Rey. All he can do is grin back.

 

Then she is leaping toward him, great long strides topped by that blinding smile, the smile of the woman who came to him when she didn’t have to, who helped him, who saved him, who loved him. He is still frozen to the spot and she moves quickly; she leaps onto him and locks her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Her hands move restlessly over his back, kneading at him, making sure that he is flesh and blood. She is breathing hard, as if she’s just run up all those stairs he had to climb.

 

His paralysis breaks. He lets the knapsack fall and his arms clamp around her. She feels slight but strong, as she always has, he can smell her skin and he is overwhelmed. He staggers a bit and pulls them both to their knees in the grass; they slot together and the first kiss stops time. Her mouth is insistent, demanding; he more than matches her urgency. He chokes up as he holds her tighter and it hits him that she is really here, in his arms. Her long absence has almost turned her into an idea, a sacred and nebulous wish that he conjured out of thin air, a woman that he loves desperately but who doesn’t really exist, except in his memory. But now he can feel the pulse in her neck, feel her chest expanding with her breath, and feel her hair tickling his face. It is almost too much. She has her hand on the back of his head, holding his trembling body close to her, making quiet “shhh” noises under her breath.

 

His fears that she wouldn’t love him anymore seem ludicrous now. Her love for him is pouring out of her, and he suddenly realizes that she had also been afraid that her absence would have killed his love for her. He tries to let her feel just how profoundly that isn’t true. He cups her face in his hands and kisses her again, as deep and thorough a kiss as he can muster. She responds eagerly, her hands twining through his hair. It goes on and on, until they are panting and mussed, twined together and wrapped up in each other. Finally, Ben pulls back and rests his forehead against hers. She fetches a deep, shaky sigh and cups his neck, holding them together. 

 

They sit like that for a long time. The wind blows around them and the Force swirls between them. It is stronger here than anywhere else Ben has experienced. He feels his own body thrumming with it, and Rey...it’s like she is now made of it. She is no longer a conduit but a source.

 

Hours perhaps, or days, or all the ages of the galaxy, pass before she draws back and looks into his face. That exalted, ethereal expression is back on hers and once again he resists the urge to throw himself at her feet. She rises and holds out her hand. He takes it and she pulls him up, and then leads him away. She heads for a foot track worn into the grass that takes them to a set of shallow stairs. Up and up they climb, to the top of the hill he’d skirted to reach her. At the summit, which gives them a breathtaking three hundred and sixty degree view of the islands and the ocean, there is a circular clearing ringed with stones. The moment he steps into the circle, he gasps. It’s as if he’s been plugged into the Force itself, it is so strong in this spot. He knows now why this island was chosen for the Jedi temple, and why this spot seems to have been made into a sacred place of some kind. She turns to face him, her face radiant. She feels it too, and he can tell that she’s been waiting for a long time to bring him here.

 

She draws him to the center and stands facing him. He lifts a hand and skims it down her face. She smiles, then reaches into his pocket and draws out the box with their rings inside. She opens it and holds it up, her eyebrows arching in an unspoken question. He nods, his chest tight. He takes her ring from the box, and she takes his.

 

They need no officiant, no rote recitations, no documentation. They do not even need words. Back home, they try to give each other the courtesy of staying out of each other’s heads, but here, the Force binds them so strongly that they can’t help it. They stand, hands clasped and eyes locked, and the thoughts pass between them like water.

 

_ I am yours. I take you to be mine. We will walk together from this place, and go forward at each other’s side. I love you, with everything I am. We are one if ever two people were, and nothing will separate us again. _

 

She smiles, lifts his hand, and slides his ring onto his finger. He does the same with hers, his hand shaking and his lip trembling as he sees the silver circle slot into place. They grip each other’s hands tightly; Rey rises on her toes and kisses him. He kisses back, quiet and gentle.

 

She lets him go and takes a step back. She holds his gaze as she raises her hands to her robes and begins to remove them. He swallows hard and does the same. They bare themselves to each other slowly, deliberately. He sees her eyes slide down his body; she bites her lip and he goes a little dizzy with the rush of blood away from his head. She comes back to his arms and then it is a different kind of embrace, a rougher, harder kiss with busier hands and less certain balance. She pulls him down to the ground; he sits cross-legged and she climbs into his lap. She is eager; she hasn’t just been starved for sex, she’s been without any human contact for her entire absence. Her hands are hungry for the feeling of his skin, and when she slides herself onto him, the sound she makes and the pale arch of her neck force him to clamp down on himself, hard. He holds her close, his mouth on her breasts, and lets her set the pace. She moves like water over him, kissing his face wherever she can reach it, fisting her small hands in his hair, her legs wrapped around his hips. He feels like he’s blowing apart into atoms, the Force pouring from her and into him, syncing them in a cosmic joining by doing this here, in this place, and he wonders if rites like this had ever been practiced by the ancient knights who had lived and died here. He wonders if they are the first lovers this circle has seen. They are surely the first in many millennia. He can almost feel the rocks and grasses sighing in welcome.

 

Her hips speed up; she is breathing in little pants and gasps. She clutches his head to her chest, her lips pressed to his forehead. He slides his hands down her back and pulls her in tighter, feeling the peak approach, hoping to reach it with her. She cries out as she comes, clenching around him, pulling him with her. He wraps his arms around her and groans, riding the waves of her climax, spilling into her and feeling her sensations bursting in his head like bright bursts of flame in the heavens.

 

They sit there in silence for a moment, breathing hard, sagging into each other’s embrace. He presses his lips to the hollow of her throat; she is combing her hands through his hair, her cheek against his temple.

 

He suddenly realizes that they have yet to say a single word to each other.

 

She draws back and looks down at him. “Hi,” she whispers, smiling that little Rey-smile.

 

He grins. “Hi.”

 

“Thanks for coming,” she says. He blinks; her unintentional double-entendre hits them both at the same moment, and just like that they are cackling wild laughter, clinging to each other, still joined, and Ben has never been this happy in his entire life. Snoke would never have had a chance with him if he’d ever suspected that joy like this was in his future.

 

“You’re welcome,” he finally manages. “Either way,” he adds, his eyebrow quirking.

 

She sighs and rubs her arms. “I’m freezing.”

 

He chuckles, realizing that he’s pretty cold, too. He hadn’t felt it until this moment. “Well, we’re naked and it’s windy.”

 

“C’mon, let’s get downstairs and build a fire before we go numb.” She climbs off him and retrieves her robes, haphazardly pulling them on. He does the same, sticking just to his pants and boots. She grabs his hand and they run back down the stairs, around the hill and to her little rooms in the old temple where he’d earlier seen her pallet. It is noticeably warmer out of the wind. “It is always so bloody windy here. Why the top of a craggy hill in the middle of the ocean, ancient Jedi? Why not a nice, warm, protected valley?” She is building a fire with the efficiency of motion born of long practice. 

 

He looks around. She has crates and crates of books and old texts. He sees stacks and stacks of standard rations. Those crates hold enough for one person for six months - he knows Chewie has been back here several times to drop off supplies. He never told Ben when he was leaving on one of these errands, he’d just suddenly be gone for a few days. He  _ had  _ told him that he’d never seen Rey on these deliveries. He’d just leave her supplies by the landing site.

 

He realizes that she is watching him. “What?” she says.

 

“Nothing,” he says, shrugging. “I’m just still pretty amazed to actually be here with you.”

 

She nods, then comes forward and takes his hands. “I’m...I’m so sorry, Ben. I had no idea it would take  _ this _ long. I thought a month, perhaps two. Six at the outside. I’ve been so worried that you’d just...get over me. Get used to me being gone. Decide I was never coming back.”

 

He steps closer and takes her face in his hands. “I could never get over you. Never. And I never got used to you being gone. Not for one minute.”

 

She arches one eyebrow and smirks. “Not even...a few minutes? Here and there?”

 

He instantly knows that she is talking about Helz. “No. Not even then. Especially not then.”

 

She nods. “Okay.” She goes back to the fire.

 

Ben clears his throat. “You could have warned me that you’d enlisted...help.”

 

“I knew you never would on your own.”

 

“I nearly didn’t anyway.” He sits down. “The whole way here, I worried that you’d actually meant that as a...test. To see if I would. And I failed.”

 

She turns, her brows furrowed. “A test?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She is quiet for a long moment. “You think I’d test you like that? You think I’m that...devious?”

 

“No. But don’t underestimate a man’s paranoia when the stakes are the only woman he’s ever loved.”

 

She sits down next to him and puts her hand on his knee. “Did it help?”

 

“Yes, and no.”

 

“Okay, I...have a confession to make.”

 

“What?”

 

“I meant what I said to you about that. That I didn’t want you to be celibate if I was gone a long time. But that wasn’t the only reason.”

 

He frowns. “What other reason?”

 

She takes a deep breath, then meets his eyes. “I didn’t want to be the only woman you’d ever slept with.”

 

“Why not?” His eyes widen. “Oh God, do you mean...I needed tips or something?”

 

“No! Oh, no...you’re very good at it, actually. No, that’s just a lot of pressure. On me, on us. I’ve been with other people. I didn’t want you to start wondering, in five or ten years, if this was all there was. I didn’t want to be the end-all and be-all of your sex life.”

 

He doesn’t know how to respond to that. “You will be now. I don’t care if you leave for two decades next time.”

 

She goes fierce suddenly, and grabs his face. “I am never leaving you again, not for longer than a scouting mission. Where I go, you go, and the other way round. If I come here again, you’re coming, too.”

 

He is stupidly happy to hear this. “Good.” He kisses her and pulls her close. The fire is swelling and warming her little hut, she pushes him down to her pallet, and they might as well not have bothered dressing before.

 

**Day 702**

 

The fire has burned down, but its embers still cast a warm glow over the whole hut. She is curled against his side, her blanket stretching to cover them both. It can’t possibly hope to reach his feet, though, which stick out bare, thankfully near the fire. Although the hut is open, and outside the wind blows, inside it is cozy and warm, and he can see the stars. Rey is in his arms, and he would be content to stay here forever.

 

She runs a hand up his chest. “I have missed this body,” she purrs, turning her head to kiss his collarbone.

 

“I’ve missed yours, too.”

 

She reaches up and touches a finger to his moustache. “I like this.”

 

“I hoped you would.”

 

“You look...dashing.” She leans in and kisses him. “Tickles a little.” She waggles her eyebrows. “Can’t wait to see how it tickles other parts.”

 

He grins. “So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time? Concocting sex fantasies?”

 

“A bit, yeah.”

 

He brushes a lock of hair back from her face. “Whatever else you have been doing, it’s worked. You are...I don’t know how to describe it. You’re so different.”

 

“Am I? I didn’t know how much of it would show.”

 

“It all shows. When I first saw you, it was like...you weren’t of this world anymore. Like you’d become a higher being that I wouldn’t be allowed to touch.”

 

She is hearing this with wide eyes. “Really? That’s not what I was going for. Untouchable higher being, that is.”

 

“Tell me.”

 

She lays back down, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. “I’ll try to put it into words. Can’t promise much.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“This place is powerful. I know you can feel it.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I don’t know how you picture your Force sensitivity, but for me...it’s like the gears of a machine. When they turn smoothly, and all the notches and teeth line up, it runs well, and things work. After the crash, there were all these broken notches and teeth, and nothing was in sync. Does that make sense?”

 

“Yes. I’ve picked up that image from you before.”

 

“Well, I came here, and for the first few weeks, all I could do was try to figure out how to live here. I learned how to build fires. I started meditating on my lightsaber, and I found my kyber crystal.”

 

That gives him pause. “There are crystals here?”

 

“Yes. They’re...not easy to find. It took weeks of meditating and hunting before I found mine. And then more time to build the thing, and then to learn to use it. Then I started in on the texts. All the forms, all the mind techniques, all the Force exercises. I spent days and days just sitting here, reading, trying things, and always the meditating. I got stronger, I started feeling more...tuned in. Then, a few months ago...it happened.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“I was doing the spirit forms. Picturing my gears, my notches and teeth. They were smooth by then, but I wanted more. I felt something happening this time. I must have just been finally ready to accept it, but...it was like the Force swept through me, and all the gears went away. The gears of the machine became this liquid, flowing tide that lifted me off the ground, and suddenly I was levitating. It was all around me, through me, coming  _ from _ me. I hung in the air and all I could do was breathe, and feel it, and find a way to grasp it and make it work for me. That took from then until...well, the other day, when I called to you.”

 

“Gods and stars, Rey,” he whispers. “What can you do now?”

 

She is quiet for a moment. “Whatever the Force allows.” She pops up on one elbow. “We’re not leaving, you know. Not yet.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I want this for you, too.”

 

He looks away. “Rey...I know you want that, but it might not be possible. I have come a long way, but I don’t think I will ever be whole, not the way you are, not the way I once could have been. Just as Kylo Ren could never quite kill me, I can never be entirely free of him.”

 

“I had the darkness in me, too. But still, it was possible. And it will not take so long, not with me guiding you. I know your spirit. It is within you. Do you believe me?”

 

He nods. “Yes.”

 

“Good. We’ll start in the morning. But for now…” She clambers on top of him and slides her hand down his belly. “I hope you ate a good breakfast, Ben Solo. I have been alone on this island for a long time, and now it’s time for you to service your wife.”

  
He grins and kisses her. “I am willing and able to serve, my lady.”


	15. Day 702, cont'd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't update yesterday - the posting has now caught up with the writing, so it might not be every day. It's almost finished, though.
> 
> Ahead: fluff and smut.

**Day 702, cont’d**

 

He wakes up alone, and for a moment, he is terrified.

 

_ It was just our last hurrah. She gave me that one night before she disappeared and now she’s left me here alone and all I’ll have is the memories of… _

 

... _ oh, there she is. _

 

He sits up a little as she appears in the doorway, fully dressed. She leans against the rock wall, looking amused. “Sleep well?” she chides him, probably seeing the blank panic stamped all over him.

 

He rubs his hand over his face. “Sorry, I...didn’t know where you’d gone. I might have panicked a little.”

 

“I was just meditating. Now is not the time to disrupt my routine, even if the disruption is welcome and desired.” She puts down her lightsaber and crosses to the bed to sit down on the edge. He is still nude. They had made love several times throughout the night, but right now he feels like he’ll never have enough of her. She lets her eyes drift down his chest and smiles. “You’re every bit as beautiful now as you were when I left,” she murmurs, her fingers following along after her eyes. 

 

He lifts a hand and cups her elbow. “You are even more so.” He pulls her down into a kiss, then down to the pallet with him. He flips them so she is underneath him; she growls a little and grabs at his ass.

 

“C’mon,” she says, as he kisses her neck. “We have a lot to do. Unless you’d like to stay here as long as I have.”

 

“Can we?” he says, against her skin, mostly just to hear her giggle. She obliges him, then slaps at his hands, which are wandering into impolite areas. He sits up. “Oh, all right.”

 

“Good.” She sits up too, leans in and kisses his nose. “Husband.”

 

A little shiver runs through him upon hearing the word. “Wife.”

 

A thought he’d had the night before recurs to him. “Hey. I have a question.”

 

“Shoot.”

 

“So when you led me up to that circle and pulled out the rings?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“It was very solemn and dramatic.”

 

“That’s what I was going for.”

 

“Well...what if I hadn’t had the rings on me? What if we’d been standing there, all ready to marry each other, witnessed by the Force or whatever, silently communing with each other’s spirits, and I’d had to say, just wait one second, hold that thought, I have to go get the rings? Would have spoiled the moment a bit.”

 

She laughs. “Believe it or not, I thought about that. I felt them in your pocket when we hugged the first time. So I knew you had them on you.”

 

“Oh. Good.” 

 

“Has that been bugging you?”

 

“A bit, yeah! Nobody ever brings up these practical questions. Like, what if I’d had to pee really bad when I got here and had to excuse myself while you stood there all goddess-like, waiting for me to pee?”

 

“What if the wind had blown all my hair in my face at an inopportune moment and I had to disentangle myself and taken us out of the moment?”

 

“See, this is what I’m talking about.”

 

“Well, none of those things happened, so I guess we’re meant to be.”

 

He smiles. “I could have told you that.”

 

She grins, then gets to her feet. “Now you’re just stalling. Get up, sleepy.”

 

He dresses and Rey picks up his knapsack. “This is heavy, what did you bring?” She opens it up and her eyes widen.

 

Ben could kick himself. “Oh, I’m sorry - I forgot, with all the excitement yesterday. I brought some food that isn’t rations. I thought you might...yeah, see, there we go.” She isn’t paying attention. She is shoving a pear into her face as fast as she can, groaning in pleasure. She drops the knapsack and upends it, spilling out the various fruits, breads and vegetables inside, pawing through them like she’s starving. She picks up some grapes and eats a few, barely swallowing before she’s biting off another huge chunk of pear. He grins as juice runs down her chin.

 

“Mmmnggrrhrhhh,” she says, her cheeks stuffed..

 

“Uh, one more time, please?”

 

She swallows and tries again. “You’re the best husband ever.”

 

“Well, if some apples is all it takes, this marriage is off to a great start.”

 

She laughs and sits back, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Wow, that was...impolite. Do you want some?”

 

“No, you go ahead. I haven’t gone without for seven hundred days.” He opens up a ration pack, leaving her the fresh food.

 

“Seven hundred,” she whispers. She lifts a hand and a small black object flies off a shelf into it. “This is one of the few modern items I brought with me,” she says. “It’s an atomic clock. The days are longer here than on D’Qar, but this let me keep track of the time in your days.”

 

He nods. “That’s how you knew when to send the check-in signal every week.”

 

“Right. And it just…” She sends the clock back to the shelf. He notes the vast increase in her control of the Force. She sets the clock down gently and precisely, no easy task. She sighs and looks at him. “It made me feel closer to you. I could know when you’d be sleeping, or training.”

 

“I didn’t even know what it looked like where you were. I couldn’t picture you here. Luke told me what it was like, and you had told me about it, too, but...I didn’t picture this.”

 

“How is Luke?”

 

“Fine. Tired. We’re both run pretty ragged these days.”

 

“How many students came for the academy?”

 

“Twenty-four.”

 

Her eyes widen. “That’s a lot more than he was intending to take.”

 

“You know Luke. He can’t say no very easily to someone who wants to learn the Force. It was hard at first, but it’s getting easier. A few of the older students are advanced enough to be actual Padawans, and help train the younger ones. It’s better now that he or I don’t have to run all the routine exercises and drills ourselves. My mother helps sometimes, too.”

 

“Is she…”

 

“Training? No. I don’t think she ever will. But she knows enough to take the littlest ones through the simple drills.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, lowering her eyes. “I left you two in the lurch, a bit.”

 

“Don’t you apologize for that. You did what you had to do. Nobody blames you. Not that we won’t be thrilled to have you back. Just be prepared for Luke to grill you about all these training techniques you’ve learned from your books. I don’t think even he knows all this stuff.”

 

She munches on an apple, thinking. “I hope he doesn’t think I’m...rejecting his teaching.”

 

“He doesn’t.”

 

“I see you’ve continued your training.”

 

He blinks. “You do?”

 

“You’re obviously a lot more centered and balanced than when I left.”

 

“It’s that obvious?”

 

“To me, it is.” She sets down the apple core and sits up. “May I?”

 

He nods. “Go ahead.”

 

She shuts her eyes and he can feel her in his thoughts. He drops all his barriers and opens himself to her. She floods in and it’s like being bathed in smooth, warm ocean water. Just as quickly, she is gone again. “Oh, Ben.”

 

“What?”

 

“You have been working very hard.”

 

He harrumphs. “I didn’t...I wanted to…” 

 

“Wanted to what?”

 

“I hoped that I’d still be a match for you, after all this. That we’d still be equals.”

 

“We are. When it comes to you and me, we are.” She gets to her feet. “Shall we test to see if we are when it comes to the Force?” A slight smirk curls her lip, a challenge to him.

 

He bounds up. “You’re on.”

 

She leads him out to a nearby meadow where it’s clear she does a lot of forms and exercises, going by the wear patterns in the grass and dirt. She leaves her cloak and lifts her lightsaber. Ben does the same. “That lightsaber is...really long,” he said. “It can’t be very easy to handle, is it?”

 

She grins, holds it up, and activates it. Ice blue blades extend...from both ends of the hilt.

 

Ben’s saber drops for a moment, as does his lower jaw. “You built a lightsaber  _ staff. _ Of course you did.”

 

She takes a step and executes a few very fast turns and maneuvers with the staff, its two blades whipping around her. She comes to a halt with the staff extended toward him, the blades hissing. “This is what my crystal wanted to be,” she says. 

 

“I have never been more attracted to you than I am right now,” he says.

 

“Don’t try and distract me. That never...worrrrrrks!” she says, the last word rising a couple of octaves as he attacks before she is ready. She falls back a step or two, visibly clenches her jaw and recovers.

 

They spar fairly tentatively at first, feeling each other out. Within ten seconds it is blatantly obvious to him that her skill with this weapon is light years ahead of where she’d been at the time of her departure. But he had not been idle, either, and he still has a much longer history with a saber in his hands. 

 

They step back after ten minutes or so. “Okay,” she says. “Nice warm-up.”

 

He nods. “Want to take the brakes off?”

 

“I’m game if you are.”

 

“Okay.” He doesn’t give her any warning, just lunges...but she is ready, their blades clash in a shower of sparks, and it is on.

 

To his astonishment, they seem to have independently evolved the same fighting style, one neither of them had really had before. She flows around him like water, he spins and follows his blade’s momentum. There are no pauses, no hesitations, just fast, liquid motions and clashes of their blades. He has to adapt quickly to fighting against her double-bladed weapon, but it is surprisingly easy to do so. He feels his blood rising; gods, how he has missed this.

 

Half an hour later, they both fall to the grass, winded and spent. “Yeah. Not bad, Solo,” she says.

 

“Hey, that’s your name, too, you know.” He frowns, suddenly hesitant. “I mean...if you want it to be. You don’t have to...that’s not what I…”

 

“Shush.”

 

“Yeah, okay.” He picks up her saberstaff. “This thing is deadly.”

 

“Don’t ask how many times I’ve seared myself with it.”

 

“There’s isn’t a scar on you.”

 

“The Force is awesome at healing burns.”

 

He turns his head to look at her. “You’re astonishingly good with it.”

 

She smiles. “It’s nice to demonstrate it against a real opponent, instead of just in forms and in my imagination. I was a little worried that all that practice wouldn’t be much good in an actual combat situation.”

 

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

 

“Good.” She gets to her feet, cracking her neck from side to side and walking back and forth. She seems agitated. He sits up. 

 

“You all right?”

 

“Yeah, I’m just...that was...invigorating.”

 

“Yes.” Her brow is furrowed, and he suddenly knows why. “Rey, it’s not the Dark Side if you feel energized during a fight.”

 

“I know.”

 

“No, really. You were in complete control the whole time. I sensed no darkness in you.”

 

She stops and puts her hands on her hips. “Nor I, in you.”

 

“Your focus is incredible.”

 

“Thanks. So’s your balance.” She rubs her forearms. “I just feel...I don’t know, it’s weird.”

 

“What is?”

 

Her face clears, and she grins at him. “Oh. I know what it is.”

 

“What?”

 

“That got me  _ hot. _ I forgot what it feels like.” She darts in, grabs his hand and hauls him up. “C’mon. Back to the hut. We need to have sex, right now.”

 

“Uh...yes, ma’am.”

 

She drags him down the hill and back to the hut. Her urgency is infectious; by the time they reach it, he is just as eager. They undress each other quickly, near-frantically. He lays her out on the pallet and hooks her knees over his shoulders, diving in to work her over with his mouth. She gasps and writhes, clutching at his hair, giggling a bit at the tickling of his moustache. 

 

“Do you want to come like this?” he asks, pausing.

 

“No.” She flips over and goes to all fours. “Like this...please, Ben,  _ hard. _ ”

 

His eyes go a bit fuzzy with arousal and he kneels behind her, grasps her hips and buries himself in one stroke. He curls over her back and holds her to him with one arm around her belly. She braces one hand against the stone wall of the hut and pushes back against his thrusts, reaching back to grip his hip with her other hand. The low, animal sounds she makes go straight to his cock and she is urging him to move faster, both with her body and with her mind. He presses his forehead to the middle of her back and does his best to give her what she wants. He wants nothing more in _ life  _ than to give her what she wants.

 

She comes hard, crying out and pounding the wall in front of her, her body rippling around him. He pulls her tight to him, holds deep within her and groans out his own climax, gasping as he is lost to it for a few moments.

 

They tip sideways and end up spooned on the pallet, limbs intertwined. Rey picks up his hand and kisses it all over, then cranes her neck around to find his mouth. He cups her neck as they kiss, his hips gently rolling against hers. He is still inside her and doesn’t want to be otherwise. She seems equally reluctant to disengage. For a few minutes, they just lie there, intimately connected, enjoying the closeness. He cups her bare breast, stroking the soft flesh, then his hand drifts south and goes between her legs. She is wet and engorged; she bites her lip and moans as he strokes her. Incredibly, he feels himself hardening inside her. She smiles and wriggles back against him. He wraps her up in his arms and takes it slow this time, gentle, rolling thrusts like the ocean waves they can hear even from this height. She tips her head back into his shoulder, lifting one arm to curl behind his head. The sight of her arched body, her mouth slightly open and wet from their kisses, her breasts quivering, makes him ache with the knowledge that but for a few twists of the fates, he might never have had this. Never have had her, loved her, felt her love in return. 

 

It takes longer this time, but no one is complaining. They move together on the pallet, gentle and smooth, until he sighs and comes again. He strokes her to completion, feeling the trembling in her thighs as she approaches the peak and then topples over with a gasp of his name. She interlocks their fingers, their rings slotting together, and brings them to her mouth, kissing his knuckles. He buries his face in her shoulder. “I love you so much,” he whispers. “I wish I had better words for it.”

 

She pulls off him and turns over, her hands going to his face. “Those words are just right. I love you, too. More than I can say.” She kisses him and cuddles close. For a moment, they are silent. “And much as I’d like to just lay here and snuggle, we are a mess. Me in particular. You just came in me, twice.”

 

He chuckles. “Ah, the practical consequences of sex. So inconvenient.”

 

They rise and clean up, dressing again. By now, it is time for lunch. Rey brings their food out to a sheltered spot with a view of the northern sea and they sit, eating in companionable silence. “How are Finn and Poe?” she asks.

 

He grins. “Married.”

 

She gasps in delight. “Really? Oh, that’s fantastic. I’m so sorry I missed it.”

 

“They came to me, very nervous, when you’d been gone awhile. They wanted to get married but were worried about waiting for you. I told them not to wait, that you wouldn’t want that.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Finn is a captain now, and Poe is...well, he’s Poe.” He takes a drink of water. “I think Chewie and I are okay.”

 

“Yeah? You were always kind of afraid to deal with that.”

 

“With good reason, I think. We’ve still never really talked about it, but...we have an understanding now.”

 

“I’m glad,” she says, smiling at him. She knows better than anyone his fear of facing Chewie, and his relief to have it behind him.

 

She dusts off her hands and rises. “Okay, Jedi. Back to work.”

 

**Day 709**

 

He is used to her routine by now. Up with the sun for meditation. Calisthenics. Breakfast. Forms, more meditation, sparring. Lunch. More calisthenics. More exercises, more meditation. She is guiding him through the Force to the balance she had achieved. He sits for hours with her behind him, her hand raised to hover near the back of his head, letting her steer his trances and shape his focus. 

 

Rey seems to have no endpoint in mind to their stay here. She makes vague statements about how the progress she wants him to make. She wants for him what she’s achieved for herself. The unfortunate truth is that he’s pretty sure he won’t ever get there.

 

He’s dreading the conversation he’s decided he must have with her today. It’s not that he wants to leave. Just being with her all the time is a heady rush of joy after so long without. To sit with her and eat meals, to watch the sun setting together, to hear her laugh, to hold her at night and have sex whenever the mood strikes them - he’s tempted to just stay forever, but that isn’t a workable solution for anyone. They can’t stay, and he has to be the one to tell her this.

 

“We have to talk,” he says, over breakfast.

 

She looks up, frowning. “That sounds ominous.”

 

“I think it’s time we talk about going home.”

 

She just watches his face for a moment. “You’re not ready.”

 

“Ready for what? I don’t need to get to where you are.”

 

“But I  _ want _ you to.”

 

He slides over and takes her hand. “Rey...I’ve spent almost three years dealing with the darkness that I lived with. I’ve come as far as I can. There’s nothing I can achieve here that I can’t also work on at home, if you’re there with me. You needed this time, in this place, alone. I don’t think more time here will help me.”

 

“But...you’re making progress!”

 

“Am I? I made progress back on D’Qar.  What we’ve learned here is that we’re still very much in sync, we still fight well together, and we are in tune with each other through the Force. Is it your plan to stay here for another few years while I try to reach your level? Because I don’t think I ever will.”

 

“I believe in you,” she says, suddenly fierce.

 

“It’s not a question of belief,” he says, gently. “You needed this. I...don’t think I do.”

 

She swallows hard. “No. You’re not ready. We have to keep working.”

 

He ducks his head, trying to catch her averted eyes. “Are you sure it’s me that’s not ready?” he asks, quietly.

 

“What do you mean?” she says, too quickly.

 

“Rey...are you afraid to go home?”

 

“What if it isn’t home anymore?” she blurts out. She then claps her hands over her face, looking like she wishes she could snatch the words back from the air. “I’ve been gone so long, Ben…” she says, from behind her fingers. “Here, with you, I know where I stand.”

 

He moves closer and gently pulls her hands from her face. “Everyone on D’Qar stands with you. There is not a single person on that base who isn’t eager to welcome you home. You are missed.” He draws her close and wraps his arms around her. She comes against him readily. “I want to take you home. I want to start our life together. I want us to help train the students, and have dinner with Finn and Poe, and wipe up the floor with some more First Order stragglers together.” He feels her smile a little at that. “You didn’t call me here because you wanted to go home, did you? You called because you wanted me here.”

 

“Not forever. At least, I didn’t think so.”

 

“I know it’ll be a tough transition for you. You’ve been alone so long here. But back on D’Qar you have a mother and an uncle who are anxious to help you through it, and friends who just want to see you again, and students who ask when you’re coming back.”

 

She tips her head back. “They remember me?”

 

“The ones that met you during their testing, yes. They remember you. And we talk about you all the time. You’re a hero of the Resistance, you know. You’re like a mythical figure to those kids.”

 

She seems bolstered by this. “A mythical figure, huh?”

 

“Just ask me how many of the students wear their hair like yours. And not just the girls,” he says, grinning.

 

“Oh my God,” she says, breaking into laughter. He is relieved to hear it. She goes quiet and just sits for a moment, leaning against his shoulder, looking thoughtful. “I think I wanted you to have that moment that I had. That feeling of everything clicking into place, of having total control.”

 

“I still could. But - and there’s just no getting around this - I lived with the Dark Side for a long time. You just had the barest taste of it. That was my life. It made me do things I can never take back, or forgive myself for. I think part of the price I have to pay for that is to never really be one with the Force. I’m all right with that. I do well enough. I just wanted to be able to match you, and I think I do.”

 

She nods. “You do.”

 

“I don’t need to reach a higher plane, like you have. You can carry that torch for all of us, Luke too, because I don’t think he ever got there himself.”

 

“You’re so  _ calm. _ How are you so calm?”

 

He smooths her hair back. “Because I know what I want. I just want to go home with my wife, and start being her husband.”

  
She leans forward until their foreheads touch. “Then let’s go home,” she whispers. 


	16. Day 911

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the day-count throws you off, we are back in Rey's point of view now, so it's back to HER day-count.
> 
> Thank you all for your great comments, and for reading this story! It's been fun writing it. I may be continuing with a follow-up story in this universe. If you'd like to be alerted, subscribe to my author name and you'll get an email when I post anything new.

**Day 911**

 

She wakes alone on her last day on Ahch-To, stretches and turns over. The fire has been lit - it is chilly this morning. The rainy season is drawing near. She’s glad she won’t be here to suffer through it as she has the last two, although she will miss this place. Ben has promised that they can return whenever she wants, to train or meditate, but she knows how this goes. They will get back, life will resume, the days will fill up and fly by and it will be a long time before they can carve out the time to come back - if they ever can.

 

She finds that she’s alright with that. She’s done what she came to do. Her work here is finished. She only wishes Ben’s work could be, too. She’s not sure she accepts his assertion that he’ll never get as far as she has, but she can’t deny that it might take a lot longer, and she’s no more ready to stay here for years than he is.

 

Her husband comes in carrying some firewood.  _ Husband. _ The word still feels strange in her mind. It’s hard to internalize the fact that she has one, when she hadn’t even really been familiar with the entire concept of marriage until she’d left Jakku. Two people...swearing oaths to each other? Out of love and cooperation? Promising to honor and protect each other? Making solemn, heartfelt vows for no other reason than mutual affection and the desire for one another’s companionship? Surely people didn’t really do this, did they? Without an ulterior motive, or the hope to gain an advantage of the other somehow? It didn’t really compute. But now, she understands. She looks at him and she understands it all.

 

“Oh, you’re up,” he says. He puts the logs on the fire, then leans over her and kisses her forehead. “We have a lot of loading to do.”

 

“No, we don’t.”

 

He frowns. “But...didn’t you say you don’t want to leave anything here?”

 

“I don’t. But we can get it all down to the Falcon in one trip.”

 

He blinks. “Are you telling me you can levitate all these crates at once? All the way down to the ship?”

 

“Sure.”

 

His eyebrows shoot up and he looks dubious. “Okay, if you say so.”

 

She sits up. “But it will be easier if we get them all in one spot. And there’s no reason to dilly-dally. I know you’re anxious to get going.”

 

“You’re not?” he asks, pulling the last of the apples he’d brought with him out of a bag.

 

“I am. In a way.”

 

“It’s really going to be fine.”

 

“I know. I’ve just grown used to being here.” She gets up. “Did you eat?”

 

“Yes. You eat, I’ll move the last of the crates outside.”

 

She sits down and gorges on as much of the not-so-fresh-anymore food as she can. Seems a shame to waste it. She’s insisting on taking all the uneaten rations back with them - it doesn’t sit right to leave abandoned supplies in this sacred place, and they can be put to use back on base. She’s even packing up the blankets from her pallet. All the training texts, manuals, and tools -- nothing is being left that hadn’t been here when she arrived.

 

She finishes her breakfast, gets dressed and goes outside, sliding her saber into its holster on her hip. The crates are neatly stacked near the stairs. Ben is standing near the cliff’s edge, one foot up on a rock, staring out at the ocean with his arms folded over his chest, a pose that always makes him look even broader and brawnier than he already is. The wind is lifting his hair off his neck and billowing his cloak behind him. She chuckles to herself. He looks like a Jedi recruitment poster.

 

She walks up next to him and slides her arms around his waist, leaning her cheek against his bicep. “You’ll miss it, too.”

 

“What I’ll miss is being here alone with you. Being able to just spend all my time with you, to have no other obligations and nothing else to worry about.” He turns and takes her hands. “Let’s run away together. We’ll be free-range Jedi. We’ll take the Falcon and just strike out into the galaxy, making our own way.”

 

“We’d be bored within two days.”

 

He sighs. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He shrugs. “It’s a nice bedtime story, anyway.”

 

“You were right last night, when you said that we have responsibilities and things to do back on D’Qar. And you’re still right.” She arches an eyebrow. “But I’ll be glad to run away with you on a more...short-term basis, from time to time.”

 

He grins. “Deal.” He looks over at the crates. “Well, are you ready to go?” His knapsack is at his feet.

 

She looks around one last time. It’s hard to remember that she was alone here for two years. The last week here, with Ben, has eclipsed all that came before, and it seems impossible that he hasn’t been here the whole time. “I’m ready.”

 

With one last look around, she slings her bag over her chest and goes to the pile of crates. She can feel Ben watching her. He is still uncertain. He won’t be in a moment.

 

She takes a breath, her gears smooth out and focus. She lifts her hand, and the crates rise off the ground. She starts down the stairs, the crates following her hand’s directions. Ben sticks close behind; she can sense him ready to step in and assist her if she tires, but she won’t. She hasn’t really told him the extent of the power she’s been able to access, mostly because it’s hard to put into words.. He’ll find out in due course.

 

They reach the Falcon in under an hour. Ben jogs ahead and lowers the ramp so she can guide the crates up and into the cargo hold. She lowers them into place and steps back. He is staring at her. “Okay. I’m convinced,” he says.

 

“And?” she says, smirking.

 

“And a little turned on.”

 

“Thought so.” She claps him on the shoulder and heads for the cockpit. “C’mon, Solo. Let’s see if I remember how to fly this hunk of junk.”

 

“You want to fly?” he asks.

 

“Sure, why not? It’s been awhile. I’ve missed this old girl,” she says, sitting in the pilot’s seat and running a hand over the console. “If you don’t mind.”

 

“It’s more your ship than it is mine.” He goes quiet, and Rey feels that pinch of sadness and self-loathing in him again as he thinks of his father.

 

She leans over and kisses his temple. “Thanks.” She starts up the atmospheric engines and they rise off the island. She finds herself watching it recede out the window as they gain altitude.

 

“You’ll miss it,” he says, from behind her.

 

“Yeah. I will. But it isn’t going anywhere. And I’m bringing some of it back with me.” She turns and catches him watching her with the most besotted expression she’s ever seen.

 

He lifts a hand and caresses her face. “I love you,” he murmurs.

 

She smiles, turning her cheek into his palm. “What brought that on?”

 

“Do I need a reason?” He sighs. “It’s going to be different, you know. At home. There’ll be the students, and a lot of people’s lives are not what you remember.”

 

“I know. I’m...nervous, but excited. I don’t know how I’m going to fit back into everything.”

 

“You will. And you’ll have me. And Luke, and Finn and Poe.”

 

“You’re forgetting one thing I’m going to have, that I’ve never had before.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“A mother.”

 

He grins. “Let me know if you’re still glad about that after six months.”

 

She chuckles, and programs the coordinates into the nav computer. “Let’s go home.”

 

**Day 912**

 

She lets Ben land the ship. She’s too jittery. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, from the pilot’s seat. “Relax. It’s home, remember?” She nods. She reaches over for his hand but he doesn’t take hers. He glances at her, apologetic. “I’m sorry, I kind of need both right now.” So she just sits, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them, as he flies the ship through the atmosphere. He flips on the comms. “D'Qar Control, from Falcon, requesting permission to land.”

 

“Falcon, from Control, permission granted in bay 18.” A brief pause. “Crew aboard?”

 

He smiles. “Two crew aboard.”

 

“Great news, Falcon. Your mother’s been in here every day asking if we’ve heard anything from you.”

 

“Tell her you just have. Falcon out.”

 

She watches out the window as he guides the ship to its usual bay. The base looks the same to her...but there are a lot of people around. More every moment.

 

And they’re all coming this way. “Oh, shit,” she mutters. “Half the base is running out here to meet us.”

 

“They’re excited to see you.” He sobers. “Is this too much? I can go out and tell them to give you some space.”

 

She shakes her head. “No. Might as well get it over with. Just...stay with me, okay?”

 

“Of course.” The landing struts touch the ground and he powers down the engines. He swivels his chair and turns hers to face him. “It’s okay to be overwhelmed. You’ve been alone for a long time. Give yourself time to adjust.”

 

She nods. “I just don’t know what they all expect of me.”

 

“They just missed you. Like I missed you.” He leans forward and kisses her, softly. 

 

She touches her forehead to his, turning her head from side to side. They sit there in silence for a moment, then Rey gets up. “Okay, let’s go.” He stands and follows her out to the gangway. He hits the button to lower it, then reaches out and takes her hand, lacing their fingers together. She gives his hand a squeeze as daylight pours in.

 

They walk down the ramp and are greeted by a huge burst of cheers and applause. Rey is buoyed by it in spite of herself - Gods, had there been this many people on the base when she’d left? It feels like a throng. She sees Leia and Luke, both of them smiling and waving.

 

Finn reaches her first, barreling into her and seizing her up in a hug. She drops Ben’s hand and hugs him back. He spins her around in a circle, laughing, and then Poe is on them as well, bouncing them all around in place, arms linked around each other. Their joy is infectious, and she hears herself laughing with them.

 

“Oh my god, you are glowing!” Poe is raving. 

 

“We missed you so much!”

 

“Did Ben tell you we’re married?”

 

“We’re gonna have another wedding so you can be there.”

 

“Are you a mega-Jedi now? Could you crush me with a thought?”

 

“Don’t ever go away for so long again, it’s been too awful not having you here.”

 

These greetings tumble over and over each other as they race to tell her everything, but people are pressing in behind them and Rey’s mind is spinning. “I missed you guys, too,” she says, kissing both of their cheeks in succession. “And I’ll tell you all about it later. Ben told me you’re married, that’s fantastic. And I could  _ always _ crush you with a thought, so be nice,” she teases Poe. He laughs, and they reluctantly make way for others.

 

She glances over at Ben, who is greeting his own family (hers too, she reminds herself). Leia steps away from him to let Luke have a turn; she approaches Rey. Everyone who’s trying to hug and talk to her parts to let Leia through. Rey feels a stab of nervousness; she’s always been a little intimidated by the General and now she’s her mother-in-law. She wonders if Leia has noticed their rings. “Rey,” Leia says, then smiles that serene smile she has and holds out her arms.

 

Rey goes into them, relieved, and hugs her tightly. “General,” she says. “I’m glad to see you.”

 

Leia shakes her head. “You’re my daughter now,” she says. “You call me Leia.” She pulls back a little. “Or Mother, if you want.”

 

Tears prick at Rey’s eyes. She has no memory of ever having called anyone by that name. She nods. “Mother,” she says, and hearing the word come out of her mouth fills a hole in herself, one so deep and wide that she had never really looked at all of it at once. She hugs her again. Leia’s arms are strong around her and she feels some of the weight of her absence slide off her shoulders and vanish. She opens her eyes and sees Ben watching them from a little ways away, still standing with Luke. He smiles and winks at her. 

 

He has often spoken of the things she has given him. Company, forgiveness, purpose, even inspiration. He’s gone on and on about how he’ll never be able to repay her, how he owes her a life debt, how he doesn’t know what he can ever give her in return except life with a notorious ex-war criminal.

 

She must remember to tell him that he has now given her a mother, and that they’re square.

 

**Day 912, cont’d.**

 

The frenzied greetings and cheers at the docking bay are mercifully brief. Ben comes over when he senses that she’s feeling a little crowded-upon and stands at her side, one arm around her shoulders; his looming hugeness helps create a little bubble of personal space that lets her relax a bit.

 

Which works for about 1.5 seconds, until Finn notices the ring on Ben’s hand where it rests on her shoulder, setting off another round of exclamations, questions and explanations.

 

It’s up to Luke to calm things down, in the end. “I’m sure Rey and Ben are tired from their journey,” he says, in that way he has of being loud and soft at the same time. “So let’s give them space to unpack and breathe, shall we?”

 

The crowd murmurs amidst itself and begins to dissipate. Rey waves and smiles and acknowledges the greetings tossed to her from all directions. “Come over later?” Finn implores her. “Both of you? Lots to catch up on.”

 

She nods. “Tomorrow?”

 

He beams and hugs her again, then he and Poe reluctantly leave. Finally, it is down to just them, Chewie, and Luke and Leia. Chewie, who’s been hanging back, pulls them both into a massive hug, growling happily. Rey hugs him back, grinning.

 

Luke has his “down to business” face on. “Rey, I sense the progress you’ve made.”

 

“‘Progress’ really isn’t the word,” Ben says, half under his breath.

 

“Can you talk about what’s happened for you?”

 

She sighs. “Yes. But not now. I’m...this is all a lot to take in. Just being around all these people. And I can sense all the students, and everyone on the base to some degree.”

 

“You can?” Ben says, frowning.

 

“Every living being has a connection to the Force. For those who are not sensitive, it’s a tiny flicker that most Jedi don’t notice. I didn’t know if I would.”

 

“You do, though,” Luke says.

 

She nods, rubbing her forehead. “It’s going to take some time to get used to it.”

 

Leia speaks up. “I’ve had your original quarters re-opened, they should be ready for you.”

 

“Thank you,” Rey says. 

 

“The students are eager to…” Luke begins, but Ben cuts him off.

 

“Luke, I’d like to take my wife home. Please. It’ll keep until tomorrow.”

 

Luke nods. “Very well.” They start to walk off, but he holds her back a moment. “Rey, I’m...I’ve missed you. I’m glad you’re back.” He smiles, a genuine, warm smile, and Rey’s nervousness eases off another few notches. She hugs him. After a moment of surprise, he hugs back, and his calm washes over her. It helps.

 

Ben holds her hand all the way across the base. They are hailed repeatedly, people waving and greeting them, clapping, smiling. Rey finds it easier and easier to wave back, return the smiles, even greet a few people in return. But she is still glad when they enter the residential sector. “Feels odd to be back here,” Ben comments.

 

“So you moved out, huh?”

 

He fidgets a little. “It felt too big without you. I got single quarters over by the mess hall.”

 

She sighs. “I’m not sorry I left. I’m sorry for what it did to you.”

 

He shrugs. “Well, here I am, still standing. I survived.”

 

“I’m sorry you had to  _ survive  _ anything.”

 

“I’ve survived worse. Don’t waste a single second feeling bad about it, you hear me?”

 

She smiles. “Let’s go home.” She reaches out for his hand again and they walk to their quarters. The doors open and the familiarity washes over her. She and Ben only lived here for a few months, but this is the place she returned to in her memory, alone on Ahch-To, lying on her pallet and thinking of home, thinking of him. This is where she lived in her mind when she was lonely.

 

Ben chuckles. “Someone’s been busy.” The rooms are spotless. Some colorful touches have been added - a quilt on the couch, a painting on the wall, a vase of flowers on the table. And that old potted plant, the one she’d brought him so long ago, is sitting back in its spot, having obviously been cared for by someone in Ben’s week-long absence. He goes right to the plant. “And they brought the plant over.”

 

“You had it with you in your single quarters?”

 

He looks at her. “You think I’d be separated from this plant? It’s...special!”

 

She grins. “I suppose it is.” She walks forward and buries herself in his embrace, sighing in relief. “Can we just stay in here tonight? I know it’s not even dinnertime, but I...just need a little time to decompress.”

 

“We can stay here,” he says, his long arms wrapped around her. “But you want to give me an over/under on whether or not Finn will be able to wait to see you until tomorrow?”

 

**Day 913**

 

Ben had been right about Finn. He and Poe show up after dinner, carrying wine and looking sheepish, apologizing for popping in. They stay for several hours. Rey does a lot of talking, they do a lot of asking and listening. Ben mostly stays in the background, keeping the drinks filled and fetching snacks. She shows them her new lightsaber, igniting its twin blades right there in the living room, to rapturous gazes from both.

 

She hasn’t talked that much in a very long time, not with her voice. On Ahch-To, she and Ben had done a lot of communicating through the Force, and prior to that, only solitude. She is hoarse and sore by the time they leave. “I should have exercised my vocal cords along with my quadriceps,” she says, climbing into bed after their departure.

 

“You want some tea?” Ben asks, 

 

“Nah. Just need to not talk for a little while.”

 

“Well, enjoy sleeping, then, because I think you’re going to be talking a lot tomorrow.”

 

She sighs, burrowing into the blankets. “Yeah.”

 

He comes to the bed and strips off his tunic, leaving just loose pants. Rey admires the view. She does not love him for his body, but it sure doesn’t hurt. He gets into bed and pulls her close. “Well, we don’t have to talk.”

 

“Good,” she says, turning and snuggling into his arms, sighing in relief at the peace that she can only find here.

 

Now, she has survived breakfast, which involved another round of cheers and applause upon her entrance to the mess, followed by a trip to Leia’s office to fill out paperwork so that their marriage can be registered with the Republic’s census office. “Was it legal?” Ben asks, voicing a question she’s been afraid to broach. “I mean...it was just us.”

 

“Yes,” Leia says. “I looked it up. In the absence of a designated officiant, two people may legally marry each other through sincere mutual consent. There was definitely the absence of an officiant. I assume there was sincere mutual consent?”

 

They exchange a glance. “Yes.”

 

“Then we can just do the paperwork now. And you’re official.” She had beamed at them when she sent the transmission. “Congratulations.”

 

So now they are off to the training campus, where she’ll have to face these young students. She has no idea what to expect. Ben seems excited; he’s missed his students. “I can’t wait for them to see you,” he says.

 

“I’m still getting used to the idea that they even know me.”

 

“You’re a hero to them. You’ll see.”

 

They pass through the tunnel and into the training yard. The students are lined up in four rows. Two of the older ones are taking them through forms. Some of them are so tiny, Rey can’t believe they’re really here to train and shouldn’t be playing with toys instead. One of the Padawans spots them and loses his place in the count. The whole class turns, and then a cry goes up from them en masse.

 

“Master Ben!” they all shout, in various pitches and tones. Some of the littler ones drop their practice sabers and run to him. Rey grins as Ben is swarmed, tiny Jedi clinging to his legs, nearly toppling him over. Babbling, overlapping voices bubble up, punctuated by his name, repeated and repeated in an attempt to get his attention. He is trying to make sure he greets each one, patting their heads in turn, smiling and nodding at their near-incomprehensible cacophony of chatter. They gaze up at him with adoring eyes, and Rey wonders if she is really the one who is a hero to these kids.

 

She feels a lump rise in her throat, unexpectedly. She flashes back to Snoke’s base, to his smoldering ruin, to Kylo Ren pushed to his knees and manacled by the Republic troops and led away in chains. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her the entire time; she had felt nothing but grim satisfaction at his capture, and puzzlement at his actions. She wonders what he’d have said, sitting in that glass box, if she’d told him that in a couple of short years he’d be surrounded by adoring students scrabbling for his attention, students who didn’t even remember now who he had once been, and what he had done. He is beaming, happiness is bursting off him, and she wishes she had a holocapper on her so she could preserve this moment to keep and look at whenever she feels sad.

 

The older students are coming up now, a little less exuberant and insistent but no less happy to see him. He shakes the hands of the two older Padawans, a human boy and a Togruta girl. Luke is drifting over, appearing from somewhere in the shadows, smiling serenely.

 

The first one to spot her, hanging back to let this happy reunion scene play out, is a little girl of about five with a cap of blonde curls. She stops short and her mouth falls open. “It’s Master Rey!” she says.

 

Everything comes to a screeching halt. The students all freeze and stare. Rey now sees what Ben had once mentioned - several of the students are wearing her three-bun hairstyle, the one she is wearing in most of the holos of her from the Resistance. She’s long since abandoned it for more resilient braids, but it’s a familiar image of her. She smiles, feeling awkward as hell - they are just staring at her. She hadn’t expected that they’d all rush to embrace her as they had Ben. They know him, and they don’t know her. 

 

The little blonde-haired girl tugs on Ben’s robes. “Master Ben, it’s Master Rey!” she repeats.

 

“I know, Yarleigh,” he says. He reaches down and picks her up. She settles comfortably on his hip, like they’ve done this a lot. She is very small, she probably needs help seeing things a lot of the time. “That’s why I was away. I went to get her.”

 

“You’re happy she’s back,” Yarleigh says.

 

“I’m very happy she’s back.”

 

“Because she’s your girlfriend!” Yarleigh says, gleeful. The other students giggle.

 

Ben grins. “She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my wife. Would you like to meet her?” Yarleigh nods, her eyes wide. Ben glances over at her and she wills her feet to move. The students part to let her pass and she steps to Ben’s side. Yarleigh is staring at her in wonder. 

 

“Hello, Yarleigh,” Rey says. The little girl’s eyes widen even further at hearing her name spoken by this mythical person. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She holds out her hand and Yarleigh cautiously extends hers. Rey shakes it.

 

“Hello,” Yarleigh says. 

 

The human boy Padawan is peering at her belt. “Is that...your lightsaber?” he asks, hesitant.

 

“Yes, it is,” she says, pulling her robe aside so he can see.

 

“Wow, it’s big. It looks heavy. How do you fight with it?”

 

She and Ben exchange a look, and she knows they’re having the same thought. “You wanna see?” she asks. 

 

“YEAH!” all the students yell, in unison.

 

Ben puts Yarleigh down. “Okay, sit for sparring,” he says. This is obviously a common command, because they all instantly go to the edges of the training field and sit in a neat row, around the rectangular border of the yard. Ben shrugs off his cloak and Rey does the same. Luke hovers nearby, head cocked, looking curious. He hasn’t seen her saber yet, either.

 

They face each other and bow. Ben smirks, then darts in and kisses her. More giggles from the students. She shakes her head at his presumption, then steps back. He ignites his saber and takes first position. She plants her feet and ignites hers.

 

A huge gasp and general “Oooooooh” goes up from the students at the sight of her two-bladed saberstaff. Then, she attacks.

 

They both pull out all their best moves. Rey injects a little flash into her fighting. She’s aware of a desire to impress the students, and Luke, as well. He is watching them keenly, his eyes tracking only her, not Ben. They clash and parry, back and forth across the yard, throwing each other around with the Force. At one point, Ben executes a massively high flip over her head in a full lay-out and strikes at her in midair. She counters the strike, grabs him with the Force before he hits the ground, and tosses him on his ass across the yard. He winces a bit.  _ Sorry, babe, _ she thinks at him. But there’s no time for pleasantries before he’s popped to his feet and is on her again. Her staff whirls and his saber sizzles.

 

Rey’s pretty sure she has an ace in the hole, though. She has moves that even he hasn’t seen. She tosses her staff into the air and then herself. She spins, levitating higher and higher, her hands manipulating the staff where it hovers nearby. She whips it into a blinding disc of light and then sends it careening at his face like a blaster bolt. She isn’t worried that it might actually hit him - if he doesn’t react in time, she can stop it. But to her surprise, he doesn’t use the Force. He just whips his arm forward at the right moment, and the staff slaps into his hand, neatly caught.

 

The students clap and cheer. Rey lowers herself to the ground. He tosses her staff back to her and they bow again. “Nice catch,” she mutters. “How’d you do that?”

 

“Well, it’s not like you were subtle that you were going to throw it at me.” He slings an arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple. “Looked cool, though.”

 

The students are on their feet and swarming both of them, now. Asking to see her staff, asking if they can try it, asking Ben how he flipped like that. Ben holds up his hands, calling for quiet. 

 

“Okay, you’re all excited to see Master Rey, I know. But we still have work. So get into your ranks for forms.” They scramble to obey. “Want to take them through some of your forms?” he says to Rey. “They’ll be new to them, and to Luke.”

 

She grins. “I’d love to.” Ben steps back and she takes the leader’s position in front of the ranks. “Okay,” she says, forcing her spine to remain straight and her eyes forward. “I’m going to teach you some new forms. No sabers. Ready?”

 

“Yes, Master Rey!” they all say, in unison. She glances at Ben, standing next to her ready to mimic her movements. He winks at her.

 

She gets into the opening stance. “All right. Follow me.”

 

**Day 913, cont’d.**

 

Rey is doing her damnedest to drag her husband home so she can throw him down and have her way with him, but he seems oblivious to her intentions. They are walking back to their quarters after a seemingly interminable dinner with Leia and Luke, most of which she had spent answering questions about the Jedi training techniques she’d been studying. Now, she is horny and impatient and he keeps stopping to  _ talk _ to people. 

 

The night before, they’d both been too tired and distracted to do more than cuddle. The last time they’d had sex had been back on Ahch-To, and it feels like a long time ago.

 

She is striding with purpose towards their quarters, when suddenly he isn’t next to her, again. Gods and stars, who is he talking to  _ now _ ? She turns back; he’s been waylaid by Colonel Anam Kil. She stalks back to them.

 

“...so I’ve held off until your return, but it really can’t wait much longer…” Kil is saying. Ben is nodding along.

 

“It’ll have to wait until tomorrow, at least,” she interjects, seizing Ben’s wrist. “Whatever it is. It’s late, Colonel.”

 

He backs off. “Yes...of course. I will speak to you tomorrow, Commander,” he says.

 

Rey yanks on Ben’s arm and he follows her, chuckling low. “In a rush?” he purrs, pitching his voice low on purpose, knowing what that does to her.

 

“You’re a very bad man... _Commander_. That’s new.”

 

“Yeah. Ackbar decided I needed a real title. Brace yourself, you'll probably get one, too. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be commanding, though.”

 

They are finally at the door to their quarters. Rey hurriedly unlocks them and shoves him inside before someone else can materialize in the corridor with urgent business requiring his attention. “You can command me, if I let you,” she says, smirking.

 

He is across the room in two long strides and she yelps as he seizes her and lifts her up into his arms. She grins and winds her legs around his hips. “You’ve just been in a state all evening, haven’t you?” he rumbles.

 

She grabs his face and kisses him hard. “You...have no...idea,” she says, in the brief spaces between. 

 

He carries her into their bedroom, one arm underneath her and his other hand kneading her breast. “Tell me, then,” he says.

 

“Tell you what?”

 

“How you want it.” He lowers her onto the bed and crawls over her, his hair falling around his face and cloaking both of them. He is kissing her neck, slowly; she tilts her head back, offering up her throat to his lips.

 

She sighs. “I just want you. And me, together in this bed, forever.”

 

He pauses and looks into her eyes. “I want that, too.”

 

Rey’s chest swells and it all slams home to her: where they are, who they are, how far they’ve come, and who they used to be. She lifts a finger and traces the scar that runs down his face. It is pretty faint; the First Order had the best medical treatments in the galaxy. Many don’t notice it, but to her it stands out harshly, because she can’t forget that it was her hand that put it there.

 

They’ve never talked about it.

 

“Do you ever think about that night?” she whispers. “When I gave you this?”

 

His mood sobers a little, and he moves off of her to the side, one leg and one arm still thrown across her body. She shifts to her side so she can look at him, caressing his cheek with the back of one finger. “All the time,” he finally says. “Do you?”

 

She nods. “I think about what would have happened if I’d killed you. I could have.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I think about having killed you and...I can’t breathe. I’d never have known…” She can’t continue.

 

“You weren’t like me, like I was then. That wasn’t in you.”

 

“Come on.”

 

“What?”

 

“You think I don’t know that you could have killed me a dozen times during that fight? You weren’t trying.”

 

“You were...significant. I wanted to know more. I wanted to find out how powerful you were. You’d been inside my head, and I’d been inside yours. Even then, we were linked.”

 

She nods. “I thought you were a monster. I wanted to kill you. But...all I could see was Han, touching your face. He wouldn’t have wanted that.”

 

“I  _ was _ a monster. I knew it, and part of me hated it. But it was all I knew. It was the only thing I could see.” He lifts a hand and touches the scar. “This, here? This is when I first started to love you. When you gave me this scar. You stood over me and my face was cut open and you were...you were like the sun that we’d just extinguished. You shone brighter than any star we’d killed, bright enough to find me in the dark I’d sealed myself inside.” He cups her face. “I know I sometimes say that you saved me.”

 

“And I wish you wouldn’t.”

 

“It’s easier than the truth.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

He sighs. “I knew that the Light called to me. It called to me every day, and every day I fought it.”

 

“Why? Why did you fight it?”

 

“Because I couldn’t see the way back. It was too dark, and the path was beset with ghosts and perils, and there was nothing at the end of that path but pain and rejection and regret. It was too easy to stay, where I knew who I was, than to leave and lose all direction.” He props up on his elbow and looks down at her. “That is what you gave me. You were a lamp in the window. And I could see the way back for the first time. It just took me awhile to put my feet on the path. I didn’t expect it to lead to you. I didn’t walk it to find you. I walked it to find the man that I used to think I’d be when I was a kid.”

 

“And here you are,” she says, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what kind of man you thought you’d be. I never thought you could be anything but a monster. It’s you who changed that. You rebuilt yourself right before my eyes. I started to think that maybe, just maybe, you could be good. You could be strong. And I saw how you hurt, and I saw how you tried, and one day I looked up and I loved you.”

 

He smiles, and it’s a little shaky. “And I’m still not over the shock.”

 

She grins and pulls him down into her arms. He comes against her eagerly, settling his head into the hollow of her shoulder, where it fits like they’d been carved for each other. “I will always be your lamp in the window,” she whispers. “And you will be mine. We will never be lost again. I promise.”

 

He is silent for a moment. She feels a tremor run through him, feels wetness against her neck and realizes that he is quietly crying. She says nothing, just holds him close, carding her fingers through his hair, and lets the silence speak for her.

  
  


**Epilogue - Day 1267**

 

She hesitates inside the front door. “Just let me check one more time.”

 

He sighs. “Honey...we’ve been over it with a fine-toothed comb.”

 

“Just one second!” She darts into the bedroom. It is completely empty; all the furniture and their possessions have already been removed. She pokes her head into the closet, the bathroom. There are no drawers to open, nothing to check underneath. 

 

When she emerges, Ben is standing by the door, one hand on his hip and one eyebrow arched, his potted plant tucked into his other arm. “Satisfied?” he says, but a little fondness is curling his lips.

 

“I’ve never moved on purpose before, okay? I just...wanted to be sure.”

 

He comes over and wraps his free arm around her shoulders. “All our stuff is already on Yavin. You were there when they unpacked it. We didn’t forget anything.” He breaks off and frowns. “Wait, where’s my lightsaber?”

 

Blank shock washes over her and her mouth drops open. “But you said you had it! You didn’t want to put it with the rest of the stuff!” Her voice is rising alarmingly but she can’t stop it.

 

His eyes go wide. “I’m kidding! I have it right here!” He flips his cloak aside and there it is, hanging from his belt, where it always is.

 

She smacks his arm. “You brat!”

 

“Can we go now?”

 

She looks around one final time and nods. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.” She takes his free hand and they leave their quarters, for the last time. 

 

The corridor has no roof anymore. Some of the walls are gone. The residential buildings - and all the other buildings - are being disassembled, their component parts redistributed to bases that need them. They’re no longer a secret Resistance, but part of the Republic. They don’t need to stay hidden on the outer rim, so the entire base is moving to Yavin, joining the large Republic military installation that’s already there.

 

“It’ll be nice for the students,” Ben is saying. “Most of them have had to spend two days traveling when they take their week off.” Ben’s contribution to the Jedi training schedule had been his insistence that the students get one week off per month to spend with their families. Luke had been surprisingly on board with the idea - perhaps not surprisingly, given who was suggesting it.

 

She nods. “It’ll be easier to do...well, everything. Still, I’ll miss this place. This is the first home I ever had.”

 

“What about Jakku?”

 

She makes a face. “That’s just a place I managed to not die in. It was never home.” She grins. “I can’t believe I’ll have a real house. That stands by itself, not attached to anything. A whole house that’s all for us.”

 

“All for us,” he repeats. The unspoken question hangs in the air between them. They’ve had the discussion once, some months ago, and it unnerved her so much that they’d agreed to table the entire topic of starting a family for several years. The idea of being a parent is so foreign to her that it feels like it’s something other species do, but not hers; Ben is so terrified of what a child of theirs might think of him and his complicated history that he almost can’t talk about it. That is for another time.

 

They arrive at the bay where the transports are waiting. They are taking the Falcon, along with Chewie. Poe and Finn have already left. Luke and the students are there already. Leia is coming on the last transport. They haven’t felt any real need to say good-byes - they are all reconvening on Yavin in a few days’ time.

 

Chewie waves to them and trots over to meet them. Rey hesitates. “Ben...there’s one more thing. I just want to go to one more place. Come with me?”

 

He meets her eyes for a moment, then turns and hands the potted plant to Chewie. “We’ll be right back, okay?” Chewie grunts and nods, and heads back to the Falcon.

 

Rey leads Ben back across the base. She can sense it the moment he realizes where she’s leading him - he tenses a little, but stays with her.

 

The detention corridor hasn’t been disassembled yet. She goes to the door, that door she’d stood in front of so long before finally deciding to enter. She looks up at him, then goes inside.

 

The polyglass isolation cell is being taken apart. The ceiling is gone, and the back wall, but the front still stands. She drops his hand and goes to stand before it. He lingers near the door into the corridor. She puts her hand on the glass, and for a moment, she can almost see him inside. “This is where we first met,” she says.

 

“We met on Takodana.”

 

She shakes her head. “No. I met  _ him _ on Takodana. This is where I met  _ you. _ ”

 

He sighs, and looks a little discomfited. “You can’t separate me from him. Not entirely. It’s not right to pretend he was a different person, that he is not still part of me. I have to own it. I can never forget. And neither can you.”

 

She beckons him forward. He hesitates, then joins her at the glass. She takes both of his hands and looks right in his eyes. “I am married to  _ you. _ Ben Solo. Not Kylo Ren.”

 

“He is me, and I am him.” He lifts one hand to her face. “But I know who I am. For the first time in my life, I know it.” He looks over at the cell. “I’m glad they’re taking it apart.”

 

“Me, too.” She slips her arm around his waist and they walk back out to the corridor and head for the docking bays. “Let’s get going. We have a lot of unpacking to do.”

 

“Can we christen the bedroom first?”

 

She laughs. “I thought that was a given.”


End file.
